


You Jump, I Jump

by J_L_Hynde



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Arranged Marriage, Christopher and Sherry have a healthy relationship, Dean-Rory relationship didn't happen, Emily and Richard are still together, F/M, Franny and Zooey Quotes, Gilmoreisms, Huge Dinner Fight, Lorelai is a bit OCC, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rogan, Rory gets a job, Rory is a bit OCC, Rory is still in love with Jess, Rory works as a bartender, Sherry doesn't leave Gigi, based on season 7 Rory, cory - Freeform, forced engagement, friday night dinners, hints of jess and rory, hints of rory and dean, pop-culture references, rory swears a lot, season 5, swearing and lots of it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 12:58:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13904499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_L_Hynde/pseuds/J_L_Hynde
Summary: In one night, her entire world was flipped on its axis. Everything she had worked so hard for—Everything that she sacrificed her time, her energy, and her relationships to was gone. Rory had done the thing no one in High-Society dared to do. She had doused her future in gasoline and handed Emily the matches. Now, she would have to figure out how to get through college with no safety net, none of Lorelai’s moral support, and without her grandparents funding; all because she refused to marry some guy named Colin McCrae.





	1. Warring Against the System

 

 

 

> " _If you're going to go to war against the System, just do your shooting like a nice, intelligent girl_ _ㅡ_ _because the enemy's there, and not because you don't like his hairdo or his goddamn necktie."  
>  _ ―  _J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey_

* * *

The first thing Lorelai Gilmore noticed upon arriving at her parents' house was a silver Mercedes sedan and a black BMW sports car parked in front of the courtyard fountain. The second thing she noticed was that her daughter's blue Toyota Prius was nowhere in sight. She had beaten her there which in itself was something of miraculous seeing as Rory was always annoyingly on time. She parked her Jeep behind the BMW and frowned when she noticed the Yale University license plate. Her Emily-senses were tingling and she hoped that this wasn't another attempt at her mother playing matchmaker. She remembered with a shudder the last 'quality' man that Emily had introduced her too. (Chase Bradford was his name, but the only quality of his Lorelai remembered was his ability to turn an awkward dinner alone with her parents into the most mind-numbingly boring two-hours of her life. To think if her father hadn't let her climb out the window, it would've been longer. Small blessings and all that.) She debated whether or not to brave the Fortress of Solitude alone or wait for Rory and after a minute decided to do just that; turning on the radio and jamming out to the Suzi Quatro's 'Wild One'.

She started to nod her head to the music and shimmy her shoulders to the beat before breaking out into the lyrics. "I'm a blue-eyed bitch and I wanna get rich. Get outta my way 'cause I'm here to stay. I'm a wild one. Ohh, I'm a wild one…"

She beat her hands against the steering wheel like it was a drum and started making electric guitar noises with her mouth. "The wild one. Ohh, I'm the wild one—"

" _AH!_ Mom?"

Outside stood Emily Gilmore with her lips pressed into a thin line. She appeared seemingly out of thin air like Freddie Kruger in the opening credits of 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' _._  A long, manicured talon rapted on the glass. "What are you doing?" She asked.

"Uh... _Looking for my lipstick?_ " Lorelai fumbled beside her and pulled out a tube out of the cupholder. "Ah, here it is!"

"You need your radio on to look for your lipstick?"

"No. The radio was already on and then they started playing Suzi Quatro and she was like one of my all-time favorites in high school…"

"—And you forgot to look for your lipstick," Emily finished.

"Momentarily."

"Well, you found it. So come on…"

"Can I just wait til this song is—" Lorelai started to say, but her mother fixed her with her with a look of disapproval that rivaled Mrs. Van Uppity's. "Right. Okay, I'm coming." She grabbed her coat and purse from the passenger seat and got out of the Jeep.

"I can't believe you." Emily placed her hands on her hips and huffed.

Lorelai slipped her arms into her coat and fought back a groan. Two seconds in and they were already fighting— _that's gotta be a new record._  "Can't believe what, Mom?"

"You couldn't come inside for one second without Rory," she said.

"Mom, I told you I was—"

"—Looking for your lipstick. Yes, you were a looking for a lipstick that was sitting six-inches from you. Really, Lorelai you must think I'm an idiot to buy that excuse."

Lorelai mentally rolled her eyes. She should've grabbed the bottle of Advil from the glovebox. "Hey, can we not fight? We don't have our buffer right now."

Emily frowned but didn't say anymore as she ushered her daughter inside. Lorelai handed her coat and purse off to the maid, Louisa, who put them in the small closet by the entryway. Then they walked past the stairs to the parlor where Richard Gilmore was entertaining guests. An older man, not as aged as Richard nor a young as Lorelai, in a dark navy suit and tie sat on one of the creme-colored loveseats in a quiet discussion with her father about the fluctuating stock market. He had dark brown hair with wisps of grey around the temples and finely groomed beard. Beside him was a blonde at least half his age wearing a black cocktail dress, showing a bit too much cleavage, and sipping on a gin martini. She looked boredly around the room every few seconds, unwilling/unable to participate in a conversation about stocks and uninterested in engaging the young man across from her. She perked up with interest when Lorelai entered the room, happy for the time being to see someone closer to her own age. Although, Lorelai guess that she had at least a good five years on her. The last guest was even younger than the blonde but not by much. He looked to be about Rory's age with dark brown hair and dark eyes and a clean-shaven face. ( Lorelai reasoned that if she were five years younger, she would've found him very attractive. But she wasn't, so she didn't.) He sat with his arm slung over the back of the loveseat and one hand holding a rock glass filled with scotch. He looked just as bored as the blonde but was trying to mask it whenever Richard or, what she guessed, his father looked his way. His dark eyes turned on her with interest, gliding down her figure appreciatively.

Emily took her arm and steered her towards the couple sitting on the loveseat. "This is my daughter, Lorelai," she said, "Lorelai, this is Andrew McCrae and his wife,  _Veronica_ —" There were the subtlest undertones of condescension as she spoke the woman's name, letting Lorelai know that the blonde was someone her mother deemed inferior to herself. "—and this is their son, Colin."

Lorelai plastered on a society smile and shook the man's hand. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. Richard and Emily had told me so much about you," Andrew smiled.

"Oh, I'm sure," she said giving her mother a side-eyed look.

"Lorelai, what would you like to drink?" Richard asked moving towards the drink cart.

"I'll have what she's having," and Lorelai turned to her mother. "Mom, can I talk to you in private?"

"Lorelai we have guests."

"It'll just take a minute." She said and turned to Andrew, "Excuse us. We're just going to have a spur of the moment conversation." Then she walked out of the parlor with her mother in tow.

"Lorelai you're pulling me," Emily complained as she was dragged into Richard's study.

Lorelai let go of her mother's arm and closed the door behind them; effectively cutting off their conversation from eavesdroppers. Then she turned to her mother, wild-eyed and angry. "What are they doing here?"

"They're here for dinner."

"No, don't give me that crap," she said. "What are they doing here? I know what you're doing and they shouldn't be here!"

"Nonsense, Lorelai." Emily huffed, annoyed. "I invited them for dinner. It's been four years, I thought it was time."

"And you didn't think to warn me?" She asked. "I can't believe you would do this! Then again, I shouldn't be so surprised—I mean you are you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, it's nothing. You just do what you always do—making decisions without consulting the rest of us. I could've been better prepared. I would've done something had you told me—"

"Done what? What are you going on about?" Emily crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't see why you're so upset. Rory already knows—"

Lorelai shook her head. "No, she doesn't."

Emily stopped and looked at her daughter. "What?"

"Rory doesn't know. I haven't told her yet," she confessed.

Emily's face turned an alarming shade of red. "Well, when were you going to tell her? On her wedding day? Lorelai—"

" _I know._ "

"—you were the one that wanted to tell her. Your father and I—"

"I know."

"—offered to tell her on her eighteenth birthday, but you said—"

"I KNOW!" Lorelai yelled clenching her hands in her hair. In the last minute, all the color had drained out of her face, leaving her white as a sheet. "I know what I said! But I couldn't do it. I just couldn't fucking do it, Mom. I wanted her to be a kid. I didn't want her to go through high school with this nose tied around her neck— _Oh god, she's gonna kill me!_ "

Meanwhile, Rory had just pulled into the driveway behind her mother's Jeep. She checked her reflection making sure that her makeup was perfect before climbing out of the car; brushing her hands down the fabric of her light pink dress, hoping to smooth any wrinkles out from the ride. (Godforbid, there be a wrinkle and her grandmother notice, she wouldn't hear the end of it.) Then she headed towards the front door but paused as soon as she saw the Mercedes and BMW parked there.  _Ugh, not again._

She debated whether or not she should turn around and leave. It would've been easy. No one would even know she was there. She could turn back right now and head back to Yale; making up some excuse like a flat tire or food poisoning. (Lorelai had done it before—To her, it had been preferable to drink an entire bottle of laxative than to sit through yet another blind-date orchestrated by her mother. Although, Rory doubted she would be willing to go that far.) She had thought that after Graham Sullivan, aka diaper-boy, aka James-Spader-wannabe, that Emily had learned to leave well enough alone. After Rory had been ditched on the shotty side of New Haven with no money and no way to get home, her grandmother had been extremely apologetic. Rory had sat her down and told her that she didn't want distractions while she was in college; that she wanted to focus on her major, her articles for the Yale Daily News, and her internship in Boston over the summer. She had stupidly thought that Emily had understood, seeing as she hadn't brought up boys or dating since—But, no. It was like her mother had said all those years ago: " _I talk and I think I'm being clear, but all she hears is blah, blah, blah, Ginger—"_

Rory took a step back towards her car, but then she thought about what her mother would say if she ditched; her mind already playing her mother's coffee-induced rant in her ears: " _Where's your solitary? Betrayed, lied to, and humiliated by the fruit-of-my-loins—I can't believe…"_   _Nope, that was worse,_  she decided and while Emily was difficult on her best day, it was nothing like Lorelai Gilmore on her worst. Her mother would talk her ear off and keep her up all night just for kicks, she hated to think what she'd do if she was ditched at Friday Night Dinner; so, with a sigh, Rory marched up to the front door and rang the bell.

"Good evening, Ma'am."

"Good evening, Louisa." She smiled politely at the maid as the older woman took her coat, but that smile dropped off her face when she heard her grandmother and her mother arguing. The thick door to the study muted the sound enough to where Rory couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but she could hear the anger and the frustration in their tone. Fighting between her mother and grandmother was a common occurrence. But it was never this bad. Rory knew it was bad because they had made a poor attempt at hiding it, whereas normally they would duke it out at the dinner table. "How long…?"

"It just started, Ma'am," Louisa grimaced as a particularly loud screech punctuated her words.

"Why don't you go hide in the kitchen. I'll put my coat away."

Louisa shot her a grateful smile and handed Rory back her coat and purse before speed walking down the hall towards the kitchen. She watched her go knowing that after tonight there would be no more Louisa. Most likely, she would quit and after three months Louisa had managed to stick it out longer than any maid that Emily Gilmore had hired in the 21st-Century. Rory would miss her.

She hung up her coat in the closet and was about to head for the study when Richard called out to her. "Rory is that you?"

She sighed and veered off to the parlor. "Hi grandpa," she said. Richard was standing by the drink cart and Rory walked up and hugged him. "Sorry, I'm late. I honked."

"Ah, another scuba diver?"

"Skydiver doing forty-five in a seventy. By the time I got to the exit, I was ready to push him out of a plane and feed him spiders."

He laughed as he handed her a club soda. Then, he lead her over to the couches where the McCraes were seated. "Rory this a friend of mine, Andrew McCrae," he said smiling as the two shook hands, "and his wife, Veronica, and his son, Colin."

"It's nice to meet—" Rory jumped as a loud crash sounded from the study. She whipped her head back to the door of the parlor as if by doing so she would be able to see through the walls and see her mother and grandmother fighting.

Richard tightened his hold on his granddaughter's arm to prevent her from leaving. "Andrew and I are old golf rivals," he said forcing a smile as yet another crashed sounded from within the study. He all the sudden felt the need to pray for the safety of his stamp collection, not to mention his first-edition Kafkas. "He and I are still battling it out to see which one is worse."

"Modesty doesn't become you, Richard," Andrew laughed. It was common knowledge that Richard Gilmore's golf game was on par with that of Arnold Palmer or Tiger Woods. He could've played professionally if he wasn't groomed to the insurance business like his father or his father's father before him.

Richard chuckled at that comment and gestured for Rory to sit on the loveseat besides Colin. The man straightened up and dropped his arm off the back of the seat, bringing his scotch up to his lips as Rory sat down. "So Rory, Richard tells me that you're attending Yale?"

"Yes. I'm going into my second-year."

"And your majoring in Journalism? Working for the Yale Daily News?"

"Uh Huh…"

"That's a very reputable paper."

"Yes."

"Have you started looking into any internships?"

"Actually, Rory was interning in Boston this summer," Richard supplied when it looked like Rory hadn't heard the question. She had been staring over Andrew's head since she sat down. But she wasn't looking at the ceiling, or the wall, or even the water lily painting that one could see through the open doorway hanging in that hall. She was watching the corner, the corner to where her grandfather's study was located, looking for any sign of Emily or Lorelai. "What was that paper called, Rory?"

"What?" At the sound of her name, she turned her head to look at her grandfather's face. There was a slight downturn of his mouth.

"What was the paper you were working at in Boston?" He repeated.

"Oh. It was called the ' _Boston Paper-Boy'_ , but it wasn't a newspaper; more of an online magazine. They don't print a lot and have a very small circulation," she said.

"I see. Were you able to publish any articles?" Andrew asked.

"A couple," she admitted, "mostly it was fact-checking and filing though."

"It's refreshing to see young people with ambition," Andrew remarked turning his eyes on his son. "Perhaps you could teach my son how to be more focused on his schoolwork, instead of going off with his friends and sinking a yacht."

For the first time since Rory sat down, she turned to look at her seatmate. He was tense, jaw clenched and glaring at the bottom of his glass. It wasn't a leap to say that he didn't want to be there any more than she herself did; and that that comment about the yacht was a sore spot.

"Uh…" Rory didn't know what to say; so she decided to say nothing taking a slow drink of her club soda. An awkward silence passed through the group and it was made especially uncomfortable with Lorelai and Emily's voices screaming at each other in the distance.

"Oh, Rory, your grandmother and I got you a gift," Richard said standing up from his chair and moving over to the windows where on top a table sat a wrapped box with a large silver bow. He picked it up and deposited it on his granddaughter's lap. "Happy birthday."

"Grandpa you didn't have to get me anything," she smiled.

"Nonsense. You only turn twenty once, young lady, and that deserves a gift."

He gestured for her to open it, so Rory placed her club soda on the end table by the couch and tore away the fancy white paper. She picked up the large velvet box and ran her fingers along its soft edges. It was a jewelry box, but it was too large to be earrings or even a necklace, and it looked to be much older than something you would buy at a store; the black velvet having faded to a navy blue color. She flipped it opened and looked puzzled at its contents.

"Wow, that's— _uh—_ I mean thank you."

"It belonged to your grandmother," Richard told her. "She wanted you to have it."

Inside the box sat a tiara. But it wasn't of those plastic tacky things you'd find in the party section of a Walmart. No, this was something else. It was something you'd expect to see in a museum or at the Buckingham Palace surrounded by bulletproof glass and guards with big furry hats. It looked to be made out of some metal, silver probably and fashioned to look like a garden of flowers with spiraling leaves and budding bulbs. There were sparkling clear gems at the center of each fauna surround by a cluster of what could only be pearls in an assortment of colors, pink, white, and black. It was stunning. It was old. It was way too expensive. Rory was afraid to even touch it for fear of somehow breaking it.

"It's beautiful." And she meant it. It was just— _too much—Way, way too much._

"Can I see it?" Veronica had leaned forward with interest the second she recognized that Rory's gift was a jewelry box.

"Oh, sure." Rory turned it around to show the blonde, who let out a gasp.

"Wow."

 _Yeah, wow. Wow, wow._ She didn't know how else to describe it, all her years of writing and being a walking thesaurus had failed her and all she could think of was— _Wow, just wow._ Rory turned it back around and closed it after Veronica was done looking, then set it on the end table.

"It was rumored to have belonged to a duchess. Your great-great uncle smuggled it out of Austria during the First World War."

"So he stole it?" She asked reclaiming her club soda.

"No."

"Well, that's what smuggling implies," Rory reasoned. "If someone had asked him to take it out of the country then we shouldn't still have it—I.e he stole it."

"We don't have any thieves in our family," Richard said.

"What about Aunt Marilyn?"

"Aunt Marilyn is a special case."

"—Huh, I seem to recall your father trying to steal a zebra, Richard," Andrew remarked jokingly.

"What great-grandfather, Charles? No way."

" _Andrew,"_  Richard stressed.

"Yes. It was while he was at Yale, my father was arrested with him also."

"Really?"

"Yes. It was Charles, Daniel, which was my father, and their friend, Elias," he said. "Story was they got drunk at a speakeasy, this was during prohibition, and my father bet your great-grandfather three-hundred dollars that he couldn't break in and steal a zebra from the zoo. Well, he broke in and when the authorities found them they had locked themselves in with the chimpanzees and were giving them whiskey. They were arrested on breaking and entering and possession of an illegal substance."

Rory cracked up laughing and even Colin smiled into his scotch. " _Andrew,"_  Richard tried to scold the other man, but he was having a difficult time keeping the smile off his face. "Did you have to tell her that story?"

"Yes, he did," Rory said without skipping a beat.

"Relax, Richard," he said leaning back in his seat and resting his arm behind his wife. "It's not like I told her of the time you went streaking through Branford courtyard—"

"Too much information," Rory winced. She lived in Branford and walked through that courtyard everyday and now, she was assaulted with the image of her grandfather's naked butt streaking past her while she stood at the coffee kiosk.

" _Andrew, stop,"_  Richard said looking a bit embarrassed, but he was smiling with that twinkle in his eye he often got when talking about Yale. The tension in the room seemed to dissipate and for a second, a split-second, Rory thought that this dinner wouldn't be so bad. That was until the door of the study opened and out charged her mother.

"Lorelai! Don't walk away from me!" Emily yelled causing everyone in the parlor to wince.

"No! Mom, no! I'm sick of this!"

Rory started to stand up, but Richard stopped her. "No, you stay. I'll handle this," he said. Then turning on his heel, marched out of the parlor, closing the doors behind him.

The doors to the parlor weren't as thick as the doors to the study, so Rory was able to make out bits of the conversation.

" _What are you two doing? You're making a scene!"_

" _Ask her!"_

" _Don't turn this on me, Lorelai! You were supposed to tell her!"_

"So, Rory," Veronica raised her voice to drown out the shouting. "I saw the portrait of you in the study reading and it's lovely. Who painted it?"

"Uh, I don't know. Some French-guy my grandmother hired."

"It was a lot more natural that a lot of portraits, I've seen. I would love to get the artist's contact information…"

" _What are you talking about? Tell who what?"_

" _Yes, Lorelai, who?"_

Rory was paying more attention conversation the conversation happening outside the parlor than Veronica's poor attempt at distraction. Paintings—artists—portraits—It doesn't fucking matter.

"You'd have to ask her," she said.

" _What? Lorelai Victoria Gilmore are you telling me that you—"_ Richard's voice boomed through the house.

 _Okay, that's it._ "I'm sorry, you'll have to excuse me for a sec," she said cutting off Veronica mid-sentence. She stood up, wrenched open the door, and stepped out into the hall.

The scene that she was meet with was not a pretty one. Her mother, Lorelai stood by the door with her coat halfway on and her hair in a wild mess of curls, that only happened when gripping it repeatedly or headbanging to Metallica. Her grandmother stood blocking the door, her face was such an alarming shade of red, it was almost turning purple, and she with her hands clenched tightly into fists at her side. But it was her grandfather who was by far the worst off. He stood all six-feet-and-four-inches of him towering over his daughter, red-faced and Rory suddenly understood what her mother meant when she said that when she told him she was pregnant, he spooked the birds.

She wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there. To walk right back into the parlor and climb out the window; cause there was no way she wanted to get involved in this. But she couldn't. She couldn't turn around and leave her mother to the lions. So, stealing her nerves, and saying a quick prayer to great-grandmother Trix, Rory stepped forward to see what all this fighting was about.

"—It was your job to prepare Rory!"

"Prepare me for what?" All three of them spun around and paled at the sight of Rory standing there with her hands on her hips. None of them answered so she turned her eyes to Lorelai.

" _Mom?"_  Lorelai looked at the ground. " _Grandpa?"_ But he too turned away. Rory set her sights on Emily. "Grandma, please."

Emily opened her mouth to speak—

"No," Lorelai said stepping forward. "I'll tell her."

"Well, somebody tell me something! I feel like I'm on 'The Jerry Springer Show'!" She huffed.

Lorelai stepped forward and placed her hands on Rory's shoulders. She swallowed thickly and taking a deep breath she said, "Well, babe it's like this…" And she told her. She told her of how she came to ask the Gilmores for money and how Friday Night Dinners was only the first condition of the loan. The second condition was that Emily wanted to arrange a suitable match for her granddaughter. She told her how a week after her debutante ball the Gilmores received an offer of marriage from the McCraes that Emily accepted and that she, being Lorelai, was supposed to have told her all of this on her eighteenth birthday and she made some sort of excuse about Jess, or Dean, or not having graduated fucking high school—Rory didn't know. All of her words were blending together in a string of white-noise. She could only think about how she had been sitting next to her fiancé for the past thirty-minutes— _Her fiancé,_  she snorted. He wasn't her fiancé. She didn't pick him. He didn't pick her.

"Rory? Rory, sweetie, talk to me," Lorelai said. "What are you thinking?"

Rory looked up to see her mother's concerned face. Lorelai rubbed her hands up and down her arms, grounding her. She blinked. Then blinked again. Then abruptly, forcefully, shoved her away. "Don't fucking touch me!"

"Rory—"

"NO!" She yelled stepping back and throwing her hands in the air, "stay right-fucking-there. Don't come near me!  _I mean it._ "

"Okay,  _okay."_  Lorelai put her hands up in a non-threatening way and she took a step back.

Rory let out a shaky breath and tried to find her bearings. She stalked down the hall, past the parlor door, before stopping abruptly and spinning on her heels and walking back a couple paces until she was standing in front of the water lilies. She stood there for what could've been a minute, or five, following the dips and ridges of the artist's brush strokes and breathing deeply and steadily out her nose. She looked at the flowers and thought about the tiara sitting in the parlor room. Her grandmother's wedding tiara, now her wedding tiara, that was supposed to be worn to her wedding—her wedding to Colin. She whirled around and the McCraes, who had been silently watching and listening to the whole debacle through the open door, visibly flinched. But Rory didn't see or she didn't even look their way as she walked into the room, picked up the box containing the tiara, and marched out.

Her mother and grandparents stood exactly where she had left them. She stomped up to her grandfather and violently shoved the box into his chest. " _You can keep the fucking tiara,"_ she hissed.

"Rory—"

"No, I speak. You listen.  _Got it?_ " That question was directed at all of them and Rory fixed each of them with such a vicious sneer that almost immediately and unconsciously and simultaneously they all nodded. "Good. I'm not getting married. I'm not getting married now. I'm not getting married tomorrow. I'm not getting married next week or next month or five goddamn years from now. It won't matter how long it is because if I do get married, I will still not be marrying  _him."_

"Rory be reasonable. Colin is a very good match," Emily scolded.

" _Oh, I'm sure he is._ That's not what this is fucking about though, is it? I don't give a flying-Christ's-dick if he's a good match!"

"—Don't use that language!"

"Oh, blow it out your cunt, Grandma."

"LORELAI LEIGH DO NOT SPEAK TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER LIKE THAT," Richard's voice boomed.

"Hey,  _Hey,"_  Lorelai said stepping between her father and daughter, "let's all calm down—"

"I am calm," Rory said.

"No, you're not."

" _Yes. I. Am."_

Lorelai turned to her parents, realizing she couldn't reason with her daughter. " _Dad, Mom,_ _ **please**_ _,_ " She stressed, "let's keep our heads about us. We don't need to reenact a scene from 'My Bloody Valentine' here."

"You have to get married," Emily said, "the contract says—"

"What contract?" Rory whirled on her, "There's only one contract worth a damn, that's the marriage contract, and I haven't fucking signed it!  _And I'm not going to sign it._ _ **Period.**_ So unless you plan to forge my signature,  _ **which is illegal**_ , it's not fucking happening! I. Don't. Have. To. Do.  _Shit._ "

Emily's face scrunched up and turned a frightening shade of mauve. "You. Have. To."

"Or what?" Rory snapped. "What are you gonna do? What horrible fate will befall me, huh?" Emily sputtered at a loss for words and Rory looked smug. "That's what I thought—"

" _W-We'll pull your_ _ **Yale**_ _!"_  Emily shouted panicking.

" _WHAT?"_  Richard turned to his wife in shock.

"Mom, no!"

Rory was silent thinking it over. Emily took this hesitation as her gaining the higher ground and sneered. "If you don't marry that boy," she said, "your grandfather and I will pull your funding for Yale. We won't pay for it anymore after tonight. You'll have to drop out and pay your own way through community college like all the other high school graduates from lower-income families. You'll get into thousands of dollars of student-loan debt which you won't be able to pay back because you won't be working as a journalist for the New York Times or CNN— _ **because they don't hire journalists from community colleges, Rory**_ —And you'll be working the drive-thru at a local McDonalds and one night you'll say to yourself, ' _If only I had.'_! Are you prepared for that?  _Are you prepared to throw away your entire future?_  Because that,  _ **My Dear**_ , is what horrible fate will befall you, should you choose not to do shit."

Lorelai and Richard stood there in shock, unable to comprehend what Emily had just said. The silence that preceded her monologue was deafening, filling every square inch of that large opulent mansion. And in the other room, where the Gilmores couldn't see them, the McCraes sat at the edge of their seats, waiting with baited breath to see how the scene would unfold. Andrew sat turned towards the doors rubbing his beard with his hand and not bothering to hide the smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. He cocked his slightly to the left and glanced at his son, his grin widening. Colin was hunched forward, arms resting on his knees, and staring straight through his father to the open door. The young man's lips moved silently, but his father knew that he was praying for this engagement to fall through.

Richard recovered from the shock first and turned to his wife. "I think Lorelai was right," he said placing a hand on Emily's shoulder, "we all need to calm down."

"Dad's right." Lorelai tried to shake off how weird those words felt coming out of her mouth. "Mom, take a minute and think about what you're doing—what you're saying," she pleaded turning away from her daughter so she missed the determined look that pasted over her daughter's face.

"Okay."

Lorelai whipped her head back around, " _What? Rory—"_

But Rory wasn't standing there anymore. She had brushed past her mother, heading straight for the coat closet, slipping on her coat and pulling her phone out of her purse. Then she dialed a number and held the device up to her ear.

" _Rory! What are you doing?"_  Lorelai screeched horrified as her daughter called the Yale administration office.

"Yes, hello. Who would I talk to about dropping out of Yale? Un huh. Un huh. Yes, patch me through. No I don't mind holding—" She turned her head towards her mother and fixed her with an icy stare.

"Rory," Richard dropped his hand off his wife's shoulder and turned his granddaughter with alarm, "hang up that phone. We can discuss this, figure out a compromise."

"Yes, honey,  _you don't have to do this_ ," Lorelai agreed. "Let's discuss this."

Rory cocked her head and frowned. "What's left to discuss?" She asked. "We've already discussed it. I'm not marrying that guy and grandma's agreed to let me out of the engagement as long as you two don't pay for Yale—There's your compromise right there, Grandpa—and I'm okay with that, so what's left to discuss? Dinner? Ya'know, I've lost my appetite and I really need to start packing, so I'll take a rain check on that too—" She cut off mid-sentence as she directed her attention to her phone. " _Oh, hi. Who am I speaking with? Oh, Janet? Hi, Janet. Look, I'm sorry for calling so late, I know you got other things to do so I'm gonna cut to the chase, okay? Okay. Here's the situation, come second-Semester I'm not going to be able to afford to attend Yale—I know, it sucks. Un huh. Okay. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. No, I'll hold. You're fine, Janet, talk to your supervisor. I can wait—"_

"Wait wait wait!" Lorelai rushed forward and tried to grab the phone out of Rory's hand. She ducked under her mother's grabbing hands and twisted the phone out of her reach. Putting the device behind her back, she started back into the library. " _Rory gimme that phone!"_  She yelled running after her.

"Lorelai! Rory!" Richard scolded following after them and Emily just stood there staring at nothing. She didn't even flinch when two seconds later a crash sounded from the dining room as the girls ran into Louisa, breaking four of her favorite china plates, and Richard yelling at them all the while.

After what felt like an eternity, but in reality was only a couple of seconds, Veronica poked her head out of the parlor and saw Emily standing there in a comatose state. She took pity on the older woman and walked up to her with a gin martini and a warm hug. "Emily, here." She handed her the drink and lead her calmly back to the parlor sitting her on the armchair next to the loveseat and smiled at her. "Drink it'll help," she said in her low southern drawl.

Then turning to her husband, she placed her hands on her hips and frowned. " _Andrew,"_  she stressed.

"Yes, dear?"

"Go out there and help Richard wrangle those two before they destroy Emily's beautiful house," she said. "Colin, you go too."

"No."

Veronica raised a finely plucked brow. " _No?"_  She repeated. " _Andrew—"_

" _Veronica,"_  Andrew said using the same tone as his wife.

"Don't sass me," she warned.

"I'm not." He said, but she rolled her eyes. "Look," he stood up and straighten his tie, "it's not our place to get involved. This is family business—"

"And, what has this whole evenin' been about?" She asked. "Joining our families, right? So you go out there and help Richard. And Colin, you get to the kitchen and make some coffee—something strong with a bit of whiskey, okay?"

The McCrae men opened their mouths to protest, but Veronica fixed them with a stern look and pointed to the door. "Get going.  _Now._ "

"Yes. Ma'am," they said and left Veronica alone to handle Emily.

The two men walked into the dining room, where Louisa was sweeping up shards of glass, three-bitter-lettuces, and croutons. The older woman looked irately up at them. " _Do you need something?"_  She huffed a little less polite than she had been earlier.

"Colin, help the maid clean up the glass," Andrew said leaving no room for discussion before he followed the Gilmores into the den.

In the time that it had taken for Andrew to enter the den, things between Rory and Lorelai and Richard had escalated to ridiculous proportions. The first thing he noticed was Richard waving his arms wildly trying to catch either his daughter or granddaughter as they ran around the room in a flurry of limbs that rivaled that of the Tasmanian devil, Taz—Except there were two of them and they were moving parallel to one another around the dark, leather couches again and again. "In all my years, I have never before seen someone behave as irrationally as the two— _LORELAI,_ _ **STOP THROWING COASTERS!**_ "

Andrew barely had enough time to duck out of the way as one of the small, cork disks went whizzing past his head—In any other situation, this would've been hilarious. If this had happened in a courtroom, Andrew would've been amused. If he had seen it on 'Dr. Phil' or 'The Murray Show', he would've laughed until his sides were splitting. But this was not some made-up hoax to raise viewership, so the only thing splitting was Andrew's headache.

"You're making a  _ **Huge**_ , mistake!" Lorelai wailed at her daughter. "Don't do this, Rory! Don't throw away everything we worked for!"

" _Who's_ _ **WE**_ _?"_  Rory screamed, clutching the phone to her chest. "There's no  _We!_ _ **Not anymore**_ —We used to make decisions as a team, or at least I thought we did—"

"We did! We do! We're still a team, Rory! Please, hang up the phone—"

"— _No!_ _ **We're**_ _not a_ _ **team**_ _! We stopped being a team the second you signed my future over to Grandma!"_

"—We can work this out. I promise—"

"NO, WE  _CAN'T!_   **IT'S OVER.** _ **I'M DONE.**_ "

Lorelai froze, her eyes widening. Rory stood opposite to her, face red and mascara-tears streaming down her face, leaving black, ugly slug-trails down her flushed cheeks. There was something in her expression that broke Lorelai's heart—to see her little baby in so much pain—she couldn't bear it, looking at the ground she said, "You don't mean that."

"But I do," Rory swore with such conviction,  _such resolve_ , that it made Lorelai wince. "Of all people, I didn't expect this from you. You're pulling the same  _shit_ that grandma and grandpa tried with you  **twenty years ago** — _Except, I didn't do anything wrong!_ _ **I didn't get pregnant! I didn't fuck up my life at sixteen!**_ "

The look that passed over Lorelai's face was that of a whipped dog. She had heard this speech before, but never from her daughter. Rory had always been on her side...that is until now.

"I did everything right. I tried to be the perfect daughter— _the perfect granddaughter,_ " Rory shot a glance at Richard, who grimaced at her words. "I watched the right movies. I listened to the good music. I kept up with all the pop-culture references and drank the-fucking-kool-aid because you wanted a  _best friend_  and not a daughter to make up for the sixteen _-goddamn-_ years of living in this house. I went to the best schools, got the highest grades, and graduated valedictorian so I could apply to the ivy-league colleges that you would've gone to— _And, for what? A brighter future? Nah, that's the bullshit you've been telling yourself every time you felt guilty seeing me spend my weekends at home studying, instead of having friends or a fucking-social-life. Everything has been you vicariously living through me, don't pretend it hasn't—_ _ **So yeah, I'm fucking done. I'm done trying to make up for your mistakes, Mom. I'm done being your due-over.**_ _I'm just..._ _ **done**_ _."_

She put her phone to her ear and, in a tone much softer and calmer than before, said, "Yeah, Janet can you send a list of those colleges to my school email. Thank you. You've been a huge help. I will. Goodbye." She flipped the phone closed and slipped the device into her purse on her shoulder and turned toward the door.

" _R-Rory…"_  Lorelai's voice cracked with unshed tears. Her deep blue eyes pleaded with her not to leave. But Rory shook her head.

"Sorry, Mom, but you're the one who threw away my future,  _not me._ " Then she turned on her heels and left; the front door slamming behind her echoing through the halls of the house with finality.


	2. Don't Hate Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Friday Night Dinner, Rory finds herself wishing for things to be different.

 

> _“Listen, don't hate me because I can't remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else."_   
>  _— J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey_   
> 

* * *

The bright, clear sun shined down on Rory’s head with a kind of mocking intensity. It was a beautiful day in New Haven; deep blue skies and a perfect seventy-three-degrees with zero-chance of rainfall in the next twenty-four hours. It was such a stark contrast to the storm of emotions raging inside her that it was really starting to piss her off. Where were the lightning and the claps of thunder so loud that it made your ears ring? The dark, oppressive clouds? Or how about the hundred-and-twenty-mile-an-hour wind gusts that could sweep a grown man off his feet and toss him as if he weighed no more than a ragdoll? If only, there had been a tornado, or some natural disaster like an a category-5 hurricane hitting the east coast, or everything below Staten Island breaking off into a bunch of little islands and being over-run with rioters as they prepared for the goddamn zombie apocalypse, then everything that had happened last night wouldn’t seem so bad. But as it stood, the world kept on spinning, Rory didn’t fall into an inter-dimensional vortex, and everyone kept going about their boring routines like they did every other day leaving Rory feeling out of sorts.

 

She chanced a glance upwards taking in Marty’s flummoxed expression as she just finished explaining everything that had happened at Friday Night Dinner. He lips were drawn into a thin line, thick dark brows furrowed together creating creases in his forehead. He looked tired, about as tired as she felt, and Rory remembered that he had to work last night (Friday nights being busy if you’re a bartender, which Marty was.) and didn’t get back to his dorm until three AM. It made her feel guilty knowing that she had rushed over to his dorm as soon as the sun was rising, because she hadn’t slept a wink and kept turning over the events of the ‘Angélique’-esque dinner, and before she knew it, she was pounding on his door, waking up his surly roommate, and dragging him out to talk (Vent.) about it with someone—anyone as long as it stopped Emily’s monologue from playing again and again in her ears like a bad remix.

 

They were standing in line for the coffee kiosk in Berkley courtyard (After that story about her Grandfather, Rory had made it a point to avoid getting coffee in Branford courtyard until she could erase that mental image of a naked Richard from her mind.) and Rory was waiting patiently for his response. Okay, maybe not exactly patiently, seeing as she kept clenching and unclenching her fists at her side and tried, rather unsuccessfully, to think of happy thoughts and not punch the first person who looked at her sideways. After about ten seconds, Marty’s blinked and drew a hand through his wiry, brown curls.  

 

“So what you’re telling me is you’re engaged?” He asked.

 

“No,” Rory scowled.

 

“But your mom—”

 

“Went behind my back and tried to arrange my marriage,” she said.

 

“So you’re not getting married?”

 

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

 

“But then what about your grandparents?”

 

Rory’s scowl deepened and Marty flinched. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around this.”

 

“That makes two of us.”

 

Marty was quiet as he tried to collect himself; pulling on a stray string from the hem of his Waylon Jennings t-shirt. The string snapped and he looked at Rory. _“I’m sorry,”_ he stressed. “I mean, Wow. I thought my family was messed up—What with the affair between my Mom and my Uncle Jerry— but yours... _Yours makes mine look like the damn ‘Brady Bunch’_.”

 

Rory snorted. “Yeah, I guess...So, _Peter_ , what do you think I should do?”

 

“You’re asking me?” He raised a brow and Rory nodded. “ _Gee, I don’t know Marcia…”_ Then after a pause, he said, “I guess the most important thing right now would be for you to build up your savings, get a job, and work when you’re not in class, so when you leave Yale you have some money to act as a safety net.”

 

“As long as it’s not McDonald's,” Rory muttered darkly.

 

“What?”

 

She shook her head. “Forget it.”

 

Marty gave her questioning glance but decided to drop it as the two arrived at the head of the line. Rory ordered her usual: a large Black Eye with one-third espresso and two-thirds black coffee, and a Ristretto. Marty ordered small regular coffee with creme and sugar. They paid and the barista handed them their coffees. Rory immediately downed the Ristretto in one gulp, before sipping leisurely on the second.

 

“So what are you gonna do?” Marty asked.

 

Rory shrugged. “Right now? I’m gonna drink this,” she pointed to her cup, “ then I’m gonna head back to my dorm—Paris gets back today from London. She’s probably rearranging furniture as we speak— and I figured I’d be helping her with that, then finish my essay for my Russian Lit. class, and then if I have time, I thought I’d pull a ‘Sylvia Plath’ and stick my head in the microwave.” She tried to play off the last bit as a joke, but Marty saw through her weak attempt at humor.

 

“Do I need to call the hotline?” Although his tone was light-hearted, his smile looked too forced for him not to be at least half-serious.

 

“No, no,” she said. “I...was just kidding—Sorry, bad joke.” Marty looked unconvinced; his face doing that funny thing where his nose crinkled up like a rabbit’s. “Really. I’m fine—Or I’ll be fine. I’m...still processing.”

 

“It’s a lot to process,” he agreed as they started to move down the walkway. His eyes were still trained on Rory, so when he stepped away from the kiosk his shoulder bumped into someone passing by. “Oh, sorry—”

 

“No, seriously, you couldn’t see them there?” The guy he’d bumped into turned and regarded Marty with annoyance. He dark wavy hair, cropped short around the sides, with light green eyes and wearing a grey baseball-tee and jeans. His right hand, Rory noticed, was sprouting cuts across its knuckles that had scabbed over, but they were fresh enough that she knew they had happened within the last twenty-four hours. Another face flashed in Rory’s mind. A younger face, more angular with a pointed chin, and darker hair with warm chocolate eyes. For a second, she could taste the mixture of coffee and nicotine on her tongue, strong and bitter with hints of cinnamon and Marlboro Red, and hear a voice rough and low in her ears: _“Leave it alone, Rory.”_

 

_“No, I can’t. You promised not to get into any more fights—”_

 

 _“I said: Leave. It._ **_Alone_ ** _.”_ She blinked and the image was gone, leaving a lingering sensation of cold on her cheeks and a tightening in her chest.

 

“Not everyone’s starin’ at’cha, Robert,” said a heavily accented voice. Anonymous-stranger-number-two slung his arm over the first guy’s, Robert, shoulder. He had wild messy dark hair, tanned skin, and hazy blue eyes that seemed to stare through people rather than at them. He was wearing a white button-up, with the first few buttons undone so one could see the puka shell necklace resting against his collarbone, and a pair of camouflage cargo pants. He looked at the pair, his eyes settling on Rory, and smiled. “‘Ello, luv…”

 

 _Ugh._ Rory fought the urge to roll her eyes. The absolute last thing she needed right now was some N’Sync-looking guy hitting on her. Fortunately for her, Rory was saved from having to say anything when Anonymous-stranger-number-three turned towards them with a brunette under his arm to see what was holding up his friends.

 

“Hey, wait...I know you—” He said, directing his attention towards Marty, and letting go of his girl as he walked a couple of paces back until he was standing next to Robert and JC Chasez. Blond and broad-shouldered, he looked to be one of those preppy types—The kind of guy to wear a blazer over a t-shirt (Which he currently was.) as if by doing so would make them seem more professional. There was something about his face that Rory inherently disliked, but she couldn’t put her finger on quite what it was—maybe his too wide smile or the haughty look in his eyes as he glanced over Marty. “—No, wait-wait, don’t tell me,” he waved his hand as Marty opened his mouth, “I’m seeing a uniform of some sort—”

 

“A Maytag repairman,” JC Chasez suggested, dryly.

 

Marty shifted uncomfortably. “Umm...I’ve bartended for you—for your parties…”

 

“That’s right, you have! You’re a talented man.” The preppy guy smiled and turned to Rory, _“He makes a kick-ass margarita!”_ There was something in his tone that made Marty frown and Rory took a sip of her coffee to prevent herself from expressing how much of a douchebag this guy was sounding. Marty, ever the diplomat, gave Rory a don’t-say-a-word look and thanked the blond. “It’s good to see you again. What’s your name?”

 

“Marty…” then he gestured Rory, “Uh,  this is Rory.”

 

“Hi.” His eyes barely flickered to her face, before they were back on Marty. “So, I’m assuming your services are still for hire this year? Your financial situation hasn’t changed at all?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“Good. Okay, I’ll give you a call.” He walked back over to his girl, who had been waiting somewhat impatiently since the conversation began, throwing his arm back over her shoulders and started to lead her back down the walkway before he stopped and asked. “Where are you living now?”

 

“Branford.”

 

“Oh, excellent—Branford. Good running into you,” he said before continuing on his way.

 

His friends lingered behind him. In particular, Robert, regarded the two of them with contempt, still sore about the perceived slight. He nodded his head towards Marty, “Excellent shirt.” Then addressing Rory added, “I can see what you see in him—”

 

 _“Don’t be an ass, Robert!”_ Blond douchebag called out behind him.

 

“Me? Never,” he smiled ruefully at the two, “I’m a friend to all people, large and very, very small.” Then he and Karen Smith were hurrying to catch up with Regina George.

 

It wasn’t until they were completely out of ear-shot, that Rory turned to Marty and said, “What a bunch of assholes.”

 

He laughed and shrugged, “At least they pay well,” Then they both continued on their way back to the Branford dormitories. They talked a bit more about classes, school work, old reruns of ‘I Love Lucy’, but were careful to avoid the subject of Rory’s _‘engagement’_. And, when they reached the entrance to the dormitory, Rory thanked Marty for letting her drag him out so early.

 

“It’s no big deal,” he smiled brushing his fingers through his hair again.

 

“Yes, it is. You got like—What? Two hours of sleep? Three?” She tilted her head to the side, her lower lip jutting out unconsciously. “That’s not good. I should’ve let you sleep.”

 

He placed a hand on her shoulder and stopped her. “Hey, no.” He leaned towards her, tempted to brush a stray strand of hair behind her ear. But he didn’t, keeping his hand firmly in place. “Don’t do that. You always try to downplay everything going on with you but don’t. It’s okay. You get to ask for help, okay? Godknows, you’ve let me rant on and on about my family on more than one occasion, it’s only fair that I listen to your problems too. So let me help you, alright?”

 

Rory blinked her large, baby-blues and let out a sigh. A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth and she placed her free hand gently over his. “You’re a really good friend, Marty,” she said completely missing how Marty’s expression fell at the word friend. “I’m glad that you got blackout drunk last year and passed out naked in my hallway. To think if that hadn’t happened and I hadn’t been the one to find you, you and I wouldn’t have met.”

 

He let his hand drop and finished off the last bit of his coffee, in an attempt to compose himself, before adding, “Then you wouldn’t have had anyone to debate old-Hollywood movies with—”

 

“And you would’ve barricaded yourself in your room to watch ‘Duck Soup’ alone—”

 

“While you would be passed out in a food-coma after single-handedly trying to take on entire noodle column at Lao’s Golden Palace—”

 

“Huh. Kinda funny how that place is neither gold nor a palace—I mean I wouldn’t even give it a gold star. Maybe a smiley-face and one of those scented stickers.”

 

“Skunk?”

 

“Earwax.” Rory grinned, before returning to their bit, “And, you would’ve had to eat all of your grandmother’s chocolate-chip cookies all by your lonesome—”

 

“ _Ah-ha!_ I knew you were only in it for the cookies,” he said.

 

“But, of course! Your grandmother is like Martha-fucking-Stewart. Can ya blame me?”

 

“Nope.”

 

Rory laughed for the first time since yesterday and Marty let out an internal sigh of relief, mentally patting himself on the back for a job well done. “It’s a good thing your grandmother’s such a bomb-ass-baker or you’d be totally friendless,” she joked.

 

Marty gave her a look of mock-offense, clutching his hand to his chest. “ _Gasp!_ I’m appalled by that statement, Rory. I could never be friendless, don’t you know? _I make kick-ass Margaritas—_ ”

 

Rory choked on her coffee as Marty mimicked the blond guy from earlier with total accuracy. “ _Ohmygod_ —Coffee almost came out my nose,” she cried.

 

“—And as long as you’re a bartender, you’ll always be a friend of mine!”

 

“Is that Hemingway?”

 

“Nope. Me, just now.”

 

“I’ll be sure to have them put that on your tombstone,” she told him.

 

“You better.” He said, “I’m leaving you in charge of the eulogy too. Think you can handle that?”

 

Rory nodded. “Of course. Here we are gathered to celebrate the life and mourn the death of Ms. Banana Folana, who tragically died outside of a Stop & Shop after dropping a bottle of margarita-mix in the parking lot and being mauled down by a train of runaway-shopping-carts—”

 

“A very “me”-way to die.”

 

“—if only he hadn’t been a bartender, then he would still be here...But then we wouldn’t be enjoying these _kick-ass Margaritas_!” Marty laughed as Rory threw her arms out dramatically, waving her coffee cup towards him in a toast, “To the best bartender, I know—”

 

“To the only bartender you know,” he corrected clinking his empty cup with hers.

 

Rory grinned up at him and downed the rest of her coffee, chunking her empty cup into a passing trash can. They walked around the corner and arrived at Rory’s dorm. She stopped in front of her door and turned to him. “Thanks again, Marty. I—”

 

“I know,” he nodded. “You don’t need to thank me. We’re friends, it’s what friends do.”

 

Rory smiled fell slightly as a sad look passed over her face. “You’re right. I’m sorry—“

 

“Don’t apologize either,” he said. “I’m happy to do it.”

 

“I just... _I feel like I’m a burden._ ”

 

“You’re not,” he said

 

Rory stared down at her shoes, scuffing the toe of her sneaker against the cement floor. It didn’t look like she believed him—And honestly, she didn’t. Having grown up her whole life being treated like a mistake, a-fucking-obligation, she had learned not to lean on people. Not to cause any more trouble than she already was. But she didn’t want Marty to worry anymore, so even if she didn’t agree, she acted like she did. “Okay. I’ll— _uh_ —see ya around.”

 

Marty nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Call me anytime.”

 

Rory gave him a weak smile, then without further-to-do, unlocked her door and went inside. Marty stood there for a moment, after the door had closed, and sighed. His shoulders drooped and he rubbed tiredly at his eyes. _“What a-fucking-mess_ ,” he said, his mind turning over everything that Rory had told him.

 

His heart went out to her and he told himself that he would try to help her. Maybe find her a job. His boss, Seymour, was always looking for more servers—maybe Rory could...Or hell, even bartending. She’d make great tips.

 

 _That’s it first thing, I’m gonna call Seymour_ , he told himself. Then he turned on his heels and started up the stairs to his own dorm. Hopefully, he could find her a job. And maybe, just maybe if he did, she would consider going on a date with him when he asked.

  


When Rory walked into her dorm, she was immediately struck with how different everything was. The furniture had been rearranged, courtesy of Paris, and Rory’s eyes flickered over the room taking in the new changes. The couch that had been perpendicular to the windows was now parallel and facing the TV cabinet that had been moved from the corner to the wall by the door to make room for Paris’s craft-table, and the table that Rory had put by the door to put her keys and various knick-knacks was moved behind the couch in front of the windows.

 

But perhaps the biggest change was the bedrooms. Rory had chosen the room on the right because it was slightly bigger with two windows showing scenes of the courtyard, which allowed for a lot of natural light and was perfect for reading. But apparently, Paris had seen it fit to switch their rooms while she was gone because she exited out of Rory’s room, now Paris’s room,  carrying a potted succulent.

 

“I moved some things around,” she told her as she placed the plant on the table by the windows.

 

“I see that.”

 

“I also changed our rooms. Now, mine might seem bigger, but your’s gets less sun so you don’t have to worry about melanoma.”

 

Rory watched the blonde fiddle with the plant, trying to find the best spot for the most sunlight. She was dressed in an all black dress and cardigan with a pair of black flats. Her straight blonde hair was pulled back into a half-up-half-down do and secured with a black barrett. Rory had joked once that Paris would be a very well-dressed widow. But joking about it and actually seeing it was two entirely different things. Sure, Paris wasn’t technically a widow, but for the past two months she had been acting as unofficial spouse of the deceased Asher Fleming while she took care of funeral arrangements, and wills, and lawyers, and greedy family members fighting over scraps of the inheritance—She had taken it all in Paris-Gellar-Fashion barely batting an eye, but Rory saw how she was trying to put up a front. Her were lips drawn into a firm line, her eyes red and puffy, and her shoulders slouching forward as if the weight of her grief and the responsibilities of being Professor Fleming's last girlfriend were all weighing her down. (Which it probably was.)

 

“Hey,” Rory walked up to her and stopped her from fiddling with the plant. Paris looked at her with a question on her face, but she ignored that wrapping her arms around her shoulders and pulling her in for a hug. Her friend stiffened, then slipped her arms around Rory’s waist in a loose embrace. Paris had never been one for hugging or anything of the sort. But she seemed to appreciate the gesture, resting her forehead on her friend’s shoulder.

 

“I’m sorry,” Rory told her after the Paris-allowed 5-second-hug was over.

 

Paris ran her fingertips under her eyes, being careful not to smudge her makeup, and smiled one of the rare-Paris smiles that she reserved for close friends and her childhood nanny and her kids. “Thanks,” she said.

 

“How are you holding up?”

 

The blonde shrugged and turned her attention back to the plant. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m actually relieved not to be anywhere that people aren’t arguing over the first-edition Faulkners. Asher’s granddaughter, Sarah, is the worst. If she thought the casket was worth anything she would’ve shoved it into her purse.”

 

Rory nodded sympathetically. “You know, Paris, you don’t have to take care of all this. It’s not your responsibility.”

 

“I know...It’s just that I want his memory to be respected,” she said.

 

“It will be.”

 

Finally, she settled on the correct position for the plant and her hands stilled on the table. “ _God, I can’t believe he’s gone—_ ” She let out a shaky breath and her lips quivered before she pressed them together. A second, then two, then Paris relaxed her clenched fists returning back to her calm facade.“He left me his manuscripts.”

 

“Wow.” Rory knew that for an author to leave someone their manuscripts was a huge gesture.

 

“Yeah, when Sarah finds out it’s gonna be the Mountain Girl trial all over again...” That sentence hung in the air for a moment, then Paris’s expression hardened as she turned to Rory. “I want to have a wake.”

 

“A what?”

 

“A wake. Here. In Asher’s honor.”

 

_“Oh…”_

 

“We’ll give other people the chance to pay their respects, say goodbye. It’ll provide some closure. I just think people are really gonna need this and I think it’s the right thing to do—”

 

“Okay.” Rory nodded.

 

Paris raised one of her thin blonde brows. She hadn’t expected that to be so easy. _“Okay?”_

 

“Yeah, okay,” she said. “Let’s throw a wake.”

 

Truefully, the last thing Rory wanted was a bunch of strangers traipsing through her dorm. But it didn’t matter what she wanted. Paris wanted a wake for her dead boyfriend, so she would suck up whatever reservations she had towards it because Paris needed this. And, Rory would rather focus on helping Paris over her grief than face her own grim future.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Just let me know if there’s anything you need me to do,” she said. “I’m gonna be in my room finishing up a paper, but I’ll help you when I’m done.”

 

Paris nodded and Rory headed towards her new room. As she left, Paris’s phone rang, and she heard her answer, _“Hello? Larry, Larry no. I’m sorry. Did you take the bar or just hang out in one—“_

 

Rory shut the door behind her, effectively cutting off the rest of Paris’s conversation. She leaned her head forward and rested against the door. It felt like everything was finally sinking in—her grandparents and mother’s betrayal, the engagement, and Yale—

 

 _Oh, fuck! I’m gonna have to leave Yale_ , she thought.

 

Rory loved Yale. She loved the classes and the teacher and being away from home, from Stars Hollow, and being able to breathe. And now, now she was gonna lose it all because of some bullshit engagement that she never agreed to. The funny part was, Rory didn’t regret saying no to the engagement. (You’d have to be insane to say yes to that.) She knew she’d made the right choice. But knowing that did absolutely nothing to curb the anxiety of what choices she would have to make now.

 

She was a list-maker. Rory liked having a plan and knowing where the hell she was going. But now, that plan was shot. She had no other plan. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She had never planned on this. She had never once looked at Plan-B, C, D, F, etcetera, because Plan-A was always supposed to work.

 

Should’ve known it was too good to be true. But, c'mon, who would’ve anticipated that? No one. Not a single solitary person—not even Miss Cleo could’ve predicted that bullshit. And, it was bullshit. The whole goddamn thing was bullshit. To think that her mother had thought it was a good idea to let Emily Gilmore choose her granddaughter’s husband was...She couldn’t even wrap her head around it. It was _Asinine!_

 

Rory found herself wishing that things had been different. If she had done something. If Jess and she had—If she had left everything behind when Jess had asked her to…

 

She didn’t know what she was thinking. Dwelling on what could’ve been. She didn’t regret that decision either. Not really. It was just...just this stupid-fucking-insane situation she found herself in— _But god, did she miss him._

 

He would’ve known what to say to make everything alright. He would’ve been in her corner, supporting her in his own way. Like he had when they first met. He was the one person to see through all her defenses and see her for who she was. He never sugar-coated anything and would call her mother a hypocritical bitch in that surly, dry voice.

 

She wanted nothing more than anything to call him, but Rory didn’t have his number. He changed it so frequently and after the last time she saw him, she didn’t think it would be appropriate to call him and tell him she was engaged (Not really.) and ask him for his help.

 

She replayed the whole scene in her head. She saw Jess, in his leather jacket, and messy hair standing in the hallway outside her freshman-dorm. The second Dean saw him, that old possessiveness had flared up and Rory suddenly remembered why she had fallen out of love or more never fallen in love with him to begin with. She had told him to leave and he didn’t want to, so she had to practically shove her ex-boyfriend towards the door.

 

“Go home, Dean. Please. Go home to Lindsay,” she had said. He had looked down at her brooding and he had tried to convince her to let him stay. But she wouldn’t have it. “Dean, go. Now.”

 

“I thought he was married,” Jess snarked as soon as bag-boy had left. “What’s he doing here, Rory?”

 

“That’s none of your damn business!” She yelled. “What the hell are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here— _God, why can’t you just leave me alone?_ I can’t get away from you!”

 

Jess walked towards her and Rory took a step back. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

 

“About what?” She threw her arms up in frustration. “Huh? What could you possibly have to say to me, Jess? You know, I’ve thought of this for the past four months. What would Jess say to me if I saw him again? I mean you ditched right before graduation, you weren’t even gonna say goodbye, and then there was no word from you for months—And, you couldn’t possibly have a good excuse for that, right? Then you show up again, out of the blue, chase me down the fucking street, and tell me you love me before getting in your car and bolting—Like what the hell? I’m actually very curious to know what your explanation for that is! So why the fuck are you here?”

 

“Come with me,” he pleaded.

 

Rory crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “What?”

 

“Come with me,” he repeated.

 

“Where?”

 

“I don’t know—away,” he said.

 

Her face twisted up like she had sucked a lemon. “Are you crazy?” She asked.

 

“Probably,” Jess agreed. “Come with me. Do it. Don’t think about it.”

 

“I can’t do that,” she said and pushed open her door to her dorm, walking inside.

 

Jess followed her, “You don’t think you can do it, but you can. You can do whatever you want.”

 

“It’s not what I want,” she told him.

 

“It is! I know you—”

 

“You don’t know me!” She turned trying to put some distance between them, but still, Jess followed.

 

“We’ll go to New York,” he suggested. “We’ll work. We’ll live together. We’ll be together. It’s what I want. It’s what you want too—”

 

She shook her head. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This was the same guy who bailed on her twice (Three times if you count the ‘I love you’ from four months ago, which Rory did.) and here he was practically proposing to her? This didn’t make any sense.

 

“—Look, look. I wanna be with you, but not here. Not this place. Not Stars Hollow. We have to start new—”

 

“There’s nothing to start!” She screamed. “Whatever we had it’s done. You left, Jess. You left.”

 

“But your packed—your stuff is all in boxes,” Jess argued motioning around them at the packaged boxes sitting on the empty floor of her dorm room— _like that was good enough reason?_ “It’s perfect, you’re ready! And, I’m ready. I’m ready for this. I know you couldn’t count on me before but you can now, you can!”

 

“No.”

 

Rory tried to get past him, but he stepped in front of her blocking her exit. “Look, you know we’re supposed to be together,” he said. “I knew it the first time I saw you _two years ago_ and you know it too. I know you do—”

 

“No, no, no,” she shook her head violently.

 

“—Don’t say _NO_ just to make me stop talking or make me go away,” he said. “Only say _NO_ , if you really don’t want to be with me.”

 

 ** _“NO!”_** She screamed it. Her voice cracked on the word as it tore its way out of her throat. Jess faltered and stared blankly at her face. “No,” she repeated softer but no less firm. “We can’t go back, Jess. We can’t. It won’t work. We won’t work. I don’t want us to work. I don’t want you. Do you understand?”

 

She remembered the flash of emotions across his face: shock, pain, heartbreak, understanding, and grudging acceptance. Then without a word he turned his eyes away and left her standing in her dorm, surrounded by her packed up belongings. The silence that had proceeded his exit had been deafening, leaving her ears ringing. He had blown into her life like a tornado and he had blown out of it the same way.

 

If she had agreed to go with him, Rory knew that she would have regretted it. Maybe not that day, maybe not that week, or even a month later—But sometime she would have regretted it.

 

She had loved Jess— _Hell, she still loved him._ But she knew that that wasn’t enough as much as she wanted it to be. She had learned that much from her parents. After years of seeing them stumble in and out of love, of her father showing up again and again to woo her mother and disappear as soon as things got rough, and her mother crying in her room, wallowing over a relationship that was doomed from the start—She had learned that love was a whole bunch of philosophical bullshit. You needed more than love to make a relationship work. There needed to be a commitment, resolve to stay with a person even when everything was shit. Both parties needed to pull their own weight and bring equal amounts of baggage and positivity to each other’s lives; and that’s where her parents fell short. Christopher always had way more baggage than Lorelai ever did, just like her and Jess, and the scales were unbalanced.

 

It was no surprise to her that Christopher and Lorelai didn’t work out. Rory had long since given up on the fairytale of her parents being happily married. Long before Sherry, her step-mom, and Gigi, her half-sister, came into the picture, Rory had come to the realization that her parents weren’t soulmates. In fact, if she were being honest, they made each other worse. Lorelai always had a habit of compromising her values when it came to her father, and her father always seemed to find a way to fuck-up their lives.

 

Rory hadn’t dwelled on it too much; but perhaps, that was why she had said no. She thought it was scary how much her and Jess’s relationship mirrored that of her parents. He got her in a way that no one else did—the same way Christopher got Lorelai. They understood each other on a fundamental level and came from similar backgrounds, had the same taste in books and music, and shared similar beliefs about life...On the surface, all of that sounded fantastic.

 

But Jess was her father. (Not in the literal sense, of course.) And, anytime things didn’t work out or they got too real for him, he’d split. He never faced the consequences of his actions and the whole running-away-together-thing...It was such a Christopher move. She had heard her father give that same speech to her mother so often that she had the damn thing memorized—And that scared the shit out of her because she was her mother in that moment and Jess was her dad. She saw everything, everything she had worked so hard for all her life blowing up into a gazillion little pieces. She saw herself dropping out of Yale, getting pregnant, and working as a maid at a Marriott just like her mother and fulfilling every negative, condescending expectation that had been placed on her since infancy. And, she couldn’t do it.

 

She didn’t want to be _Lorelai Gilmore_ . Not _that_ Lorelai. She wanted to be Lorelai, in the sense that she could choose her own future. So that everything her mother had gone through and everything she had gone through growing up wouldn’t be wasted. She didn’t want to be her mother. Nor did she want to be the version of her mother that Emily and Richard had wanted. She wanted to be herself and no one else.

 

Which is why she had said no to Jess and why she was now throwing caution to the wind and walking away from everything because she wanted that choice. That choice to be different. That choice they were trying to take from her— _Well, they could damn well try._ But she would never let them have it. They would have to pry it from her cold, dead hands if they wanted to take it away.

 

Rory let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding and wiped the palms of her hands against her eyes. She hadn’t realized she was crying. _“I’m a mess,_ ” she said matter-of-factly.

 

She let all the pain and anger wash over her, drown her, as she counted backwards from twenty. She releveled in it for twenty seconds. She allowed herself to feel all of it for twenty seconds, knowing that by doing so she could let it go bit by bit as each second ticked by. After twenty seconds were up, she would put all of it behind her— _Take it one step at a time_ , she told herself—and keep moving forward.

 

From here on out, everything was going to be her choice.

  


Paris knocked on Rory’s door before pushing her way inside. “I need more candles,” she said.

 

Rory turned in her desk chair, pausing her typing to look at the blonde standing in the doorway. She glanced at her seeing the Yankee candle she was holding in her hands and jerked her head towards a large black trunk at the end of her bed. “Check my trunk,” she said. “I think my mom put some in there.”

 

Paris did as she said and Rory skimmed over the last paragraph. The words weren’t flowing like they should. Every word felt like it was being scraped from the lining of her brain with a scalpel. It didn’t help that her thoughts were the furthest away from Anton Chekhov and his influence on modern literature. It also didn’t help that her phone had been buzzing incessantly atop of her dresser until Rory, in a fit of frustration, had turned it off and chucked it into her underwear drawer. She hadn’t looked at it since yesterday, but she knew that there would be about a hundred-trillion messages, missed calls, and voicemails—the majority of which would be from her mother. She couldn’t deal with that right now, though. She needed time to clear her head before opening up that can of worms.

 

“How’s the paper coming?” Paris asked after Rory had slammed her laptop shut with a huff.

 

“It’s fine— _I just need a break,_ ” she said spinning in her chair and regarding her friend with interest. “Did you find them?”

 

Paris nodded, holding up the four large Yankee candles she had pulled from the truck. “Yep. Thanks.”

 

“No problem. If you need any more, I can go to the store and buy some,” she offered.

 

“That’s okay,” Paris picked up her haul and made her way out into the common room. Rory stood up and followed her.

 

In the time that Rory had been in her room, Paris had transformed the girls’ common room into a shrine to Professor Fleming. There were pictures of him everywhere and posters, one conveniently taped to Rory’s door. She stopped taking in the black and white photograph of her old teacher and the words: _“Join us 7 pm @ Branford Ste. 4 to mourn the death of this great man and beloved teacher. Asher Fleming 1942-2004.”_

 

“You made flyers?” Rory whipped her head around to see her roommate setting the candles on the coffee table and moving aside a stack of books. They were all brand new hardcovers and Rory recognized them as Professor Fleming’s last published work, _‘Jaglon’_ , which he had dedicated to Paris. “That’s a lot of books there…”

 

“The very fact that the bookstore had any in stock shows the sad reading habits of the American public,” Paris said. She picked up the candles and started to arrange them around the room; placing one on the coffee table next to the stack of his books, one on the table by the window upon which sat an assortment of alcohol and a picture of Asher in this mid-thirties standing at the helm of a yacht, one on the bookshelf—

 

“Do you want any help with those?” Rory asked.

 

Paris shook her head. “No. But hey, do you think you can hang these up?” She pulled out a stack of flyers from her craft table and handed them to Rory. “Just hang them around campus,” she said.

 

Rory nodded. “On it.”

 

She took the flyers and made her way outside. Yale campus had a bunch of bulletin boards that the students could use for advertisements. One, in particular, was placed just outside her dorm. Rory walked up to it; her eyes trailing over the various flyers and ads pinned there. Someone was advertising for an English Lit. tutor. She thought tutoring wasn’t a bad idea, at least until she found something better, and ripped off a number shoving it into the pocket of her jeans.

 

Next, she looked for an empty spot to hang a flyer. There weren’t any. Not anywhere she wouldn’t be covering something else. So she decided to walk to the next closest board by the entrance to the building. It was only a couple paces, around the corner and down the hall from her dorm. There she found an empty space next to a slam poetry advert. She reached into her back pocket for the roll of Scotch tape, breaking off a piece, and securing the flyer in place.

 

The hustle and bustle of people around her faded in a string of white noise. Putting it right next to the door ensured that a lot of people would see it. She thought about where else on campus she could hang the others. The coffee kiosks would be good. Also putting one outside Professor Fleming’s old classroom might ensure some genuine mourners and not just Yalies looking for a good party.

 

“Okay, Finn, last building,” said a familiar voice. “Please say it looks familiar.”

 

Rory turned her head to see the blonde guy from the coffee kiosk and his friend, the foreign one, entering the building. JC Chasez, or Finn, looked around the hall with a puzzled expression. “Umm—”

 

“Apparently it doesn’t look familiar,” another voice chimed in dryly. Rory didn’t recognize the man who made his way next to the two. He had dark hair and dark eyes and was wearing a white button-up under a red sweater and a pair of light colored slacks. He looked vaguely familiar, yet she was sure she’d never seen him before. He just had one of those faces that were common.

 

“—No hold on, hold on,” Finn said walking past Rory and stopped as he rounded the corner, “Yes! This is it, mates.” He rushed forward with the giddiness of a five-year-old and his friends followed after him with equal looks of bemusement and annoyance.

 

Curious, Rory left the bulletin board and went around the corner. She saw the group stop in front of a dorm, _her dorm_. “Don’t leave your number. Don’t leave your number,” the blond was saying.

 

Finn in the process of writing something on the whiteboard on her door turned and jokingly said, “I’m not leaving my number. _I’m leaving your number—_ “

 

“That’s my room…”

 

All three guys turned to look at the blue-eyed beauty that had interrupted them. Rory had never been an ugly child, even when she went through that awkward stage of puberty, she could always be considered cute if not pretty. All of which had to do with genetics and the fact that her parents were largely considered to be the ‘hot parents’. She had inherited Lorelai’s round, robin egg blue eyes and alabaster skin combined with her father’s silky reddish brown hair that fell down to her shoulders, it certainly left an impression. More so as she got older and grew into her curves, trading her awkward gangly limbs for soft, supple breasts and wide hips. Their eyes trailed over her jean-hugging hips and form-fitting t-shirt with the words _“Reading is sexy.”_ It was indeed.

 

The blond’s face stretched into a lopsided grin, dimples making him look impish. “Okay. Leave my number,” he told Finn.

 

Rory frowned and clench her fist around the flyers. “Please, don’t—that’s a permanent marker,” she said.

 

Finn paused in his writing and looked at the Sharpie in his hand. _Oops._ Recapping it, he turned her and asked. “Are you sure this is your room? I could’ve sworn it was ‘er room.”

 

“What’s her name? Maybe I know her.”

 

Finn held up his thumb and forefinger bringing them together so they were barely touching. “It was short. Two syllables—“

 

Rory’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. Not only had these guys insulted her friend, but also they had shown up hours later to vandalize her dorm—She was not happy. “Well, I can see your disappointment, _missing out on a potential_ _soulmate like that_ , but that is my room,” she said, coolly.

 

The blond stepped forward sensing a fight about to break out. “Look,” he started, “I’m sorry about the mix-up. My friend here means no harm. He just has to learn that Guinness and blondes—they don’t mix—“

 

“Redheads!” Finn called out remembering. They both turned to look at him blankly and the other guy beside him rolled his eyes. Rory followed the movement frowning. He looked really familiar. Where had she seen him before? Coffee kiosk? No, that was a different guy, Robert.

 

The blond continued to apologize for the stupidity of his friend and the vandalism on her door. However,  Rory wasn’t paying much attention to that. She was more focused on the strange, yet familiar guy standing behind him. His hands were shoved into his pockets and he was looking down, avoiding eye contact. Then as if he felt her eyes on him, he looked up and winced. Then suddenly, Rory knew who he was.

 

“We sincerely apologize, and we will now leave you to finish putting up your poster of…” The blond trailed off as soon as Rory’s expression changed. She went from mildly annoyed to scared shitless in two-point-five-seconds and looked at Colin like he was Jason Voorhees there to hack her up with a machete.

 

Colin opened his mouth to say something, anything. But the words never made it past his lips, before Rory spun on her heels and bolted like she was Flo-Jo in a 200 meter-sprint. His friend, Logan, looked down at the mess of posters Rory had ditched in her haste into getting the hell out of dodge, he saw the pictures of Asher Fleming staring up at him and felt even more confused.

 

“What the fuck just happened?” He asked Colin. He seemed to be the only one that had a clue.

 

Finn was just as flabbergasted. “She bailed outta here faster than me mum when she saw me father in a dress,” he said throwing his arm over Colin’s shoulders. “... _Alright’, ya bastard, what did you do?_ ”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“That wasn’t nothing,” Logan said. Colin noticeably shied away from his gaze and shrugged Finn off his shoulder. He had never seen his friend look so uncomfortable, not since his eighteenth birthday when Andrew handed him his deceased mother’s engagement ring and told him in front all their friends that he was getting married—

 

 _“Holy shit_ ,” Logan swore as he realized exactly what was going on. “Was that—“

 

“What?” Finn asked not having caught up.

 

“—who I think it was—“

 

_“Who?”_

 

“...yeah.”

 

“—and did she just—“

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

_“Who?”_

 

“—and did you—“

 

“Yep.”

 

 _“What fuck are ya talking about? Who was that Shelia? And why does Colin look like he just shit in his daks?”_ Finn yelled exasperated.

 

Logan and Colin looked at him then back at each other. “That was...” Logan hesitated now looking just as uncomfortable.

 

“Lorelai Gilmore,” Colin explained, “my fiancée.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to everyone who's read, left kudos, and bookmarked this fic!  
> This is the un-betaed version, but I'll replace this chapter with the new changes once I get it back from my beta.


	3. Dinner on the Rocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at Friday Night Dinner through the eyes of Colin and the resulting agreement between the McCraes and the Gilmores.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally supposed to be longer, but if I had kept writing it would've reached into 14000-ish words and that was way too long. So I decided to cut it into two separate chapters, so this chapter and the next chapter will be focused on Colin and then we'll jump back to Rory in Chapter 5.

 

> _ “I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life.”  _
> 
> _ ― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey _
> 
>  

Colin McCrae hated—No— _ loathed _ family gatherings. 

 

Any function in which he had to sit or stand across from his father was to him a cruel and unusual punishment that left him wishing for a bottle of Macallan and a handful of aspirin. They had never been close. Andrew had always been in the courtroom or at the law office that the only time Colin ever saw his father was at the obligatory holiday cocktail parties and networking functions. He spent most of his childhood with the nannies (Pular as there were far too many to count.) or away at the twelve boarding schools that he had bounced between through the ages of eleven to eighteen. To him, his father had always acted like more of a cold, cut-throat lawyer than a father. He treated his son like a defendant, always up for trial and under constant scrutiny from the plaintiff, jurors, and the judge of which Andrew was all three. This arduous relationship was a result of various things, but mostly if you were to ask Colin after a heavy night of drinking, before he was hungover and after he was thoroughly soused, he would admit that the hostility between them stemmed not from anything Colin did, but from the unfortunate and tragic loss of his mother, Abigail McCrae, before he was three. From what he been told by his grandfather, before the car accident that took his mother’s life, Andrew had been every bit the doting father and loving husband. He used to come home every day to have lunch with his wife and son. Then every night he’d tuck Colin into bed and read him a collection children’s books ranging from authors like Dr. Seuss to J.R.R. Tolkien to Lewis Carrol and everything in between. Gifted with a flair for dramatics and his wife doing the female voices, he read through the stories with an assortment of impressions and dramatized gestures that left Colin hanging on to every word, and during that time, Colin and his father had been as close and affectionate as any father and son could’ve been; so it was a great loss to Colin that he remembered none of this. The one thing he did remember, and quite vividly too, was the one instance that he had tried to get Andrew to read to him after his mother’s passing. He had sat in his study in his large leather office chair, behind his enormous, mahogany desk pouring through stacks of legal contracts when little Colin had wandered in, wearing footie-pajamas, carting  _ ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ _ under his little arm. He had had to call his father three times before he even looked at him and when he did Andrew regarded him with such a cool expression before calling in the nanny and having her put him in bed as if he were the family dog that needed to go out for a piss before securing the house. It was the last time he had ever asked his father to read to him and after that, the distance between father and son only grew. It grew and grew and grew until the very act of sitting across the table from him and having lunch was unbearable.

 

Colin and his father were seated by a wall of large windows overlooking the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. The restaurant they were at, fittingly named  _ The Modern _ , was known for its Chef, Abram Bissell, and his high-class French cooking with a contemporary twist that perfectly blended both modern cooking techniques and traditional French recipes. The dining room reflected this mismatch of the old and new with modern decor and postmodernism architecture. The deep blues of the carpet and the walls gave the room a calming atmosphere and the large floor-to-ceiling windows allowed for a lot of natural light letting the patrons feel as if they were sitting outside in the courtyard and yet know that they were inside away from the all noise and hustle and bustle of the city. It was one of Andrew’s favorite spots, but Colin didn’t care much for French cuisine and while his herb-roasted pork tenderloin was good and the acorn squash perfectly glazed in a passion fruit sauce, he would’ve much rather preferred to be back at his dorm eating leftover kung pao out of a takeout container. 

 

Andrew had been on his phone since the waiter had taken their orders and as such his plate of sea bass with celtuce ribbons and grated horseradish remained untouched. There was a problem at the office, something about the Gonzales contracts that Zachary was in charge of—Colin didn’t care. He hadn’t been listening too closely rather he had been trying to figure out why his father had asked him to lunch. They weren’t the kind of family that had lunch. They didn’t share meals together. Thanksgivings were spent apart with neither one bothering to call or even text on that day. Colin could’ve counted on one hand the number of times he and Andrew had had  _ lunch _ , and none of them had been for the sake of simply eating. The last one was a couple months ago after he had arrived back from Fiji. Although, that one had been a lecture on responsibility and growing up and becoming the heir that Darrow-McCrae law firm needed. That meant no more galavanting off with Finn and Logan, no more Life and Death Brigade stunts, no more stringless sexscapades (Which was the last thing Colin needed to hear from his father—the hypocritical bastard.), and finally declaring his major as Pre-law. None of these things he had any intention of doing, except for the last as it wasn’t an option to fight it unless he wanted to lose his trust fund. Being the only son and the only heir for the McCrae family left him with very little options, no options, when it came to choosing a career path. It wasn’t like he had a younger brother waiting in the wings, like Finn, or an older sister who already knew all the ins-and-outs of the publishing business, like Logan; it was just him and being the only thing holding up the house of cards if he didn’t do it, then the whole family legacy would crumble, so knowing that and the nature of what these  _ lunches _ usually entailed, Colin was expecting for his father to lecture him. What about? He didn’t know, but a lecture definitely.

 

His gaze drifted from his father and out towards the courtyard. There he saw pedestrians milling about, mostly tourists with cameras and a local here and there walking briskly through. A flock of pigeons was scattered across the area; a couple perched on top of Alexander Calder’s  _ ‘Black Widow’ _ — _ Damn birds were like flying rats in the city.  _ You couldn’t get rid of them. After a particularly well-aimed shit from the sky, Colin had lost any and all affinity he might have had for them as a child and now the sight of them only filled him with distaste. Time seemed to move at half-speed; an effect that Andrew had he was sure. Somehow, someway, five minutes with his father had always felt more like five years as if his father had gained the mass of a black hole in order to bend space and time. He wished that he would get it over with and tell him why he was there, instead of keeping him waiting for the last forty-five minutes preventing him from leaving even after his food was finished.

 

Andrew finished up his phone call with a curt demand to hold off on finalizing the contracts until he himself could take a look at them. Then he hung up his blackberry, slipping the device into his suit jacket pocket, and turned his attention on his son. Colin tensed up, straightening his posture, and forced himself to look his father in the eye. Any sign of submission from him, even in his body language, would’ve been like putting blood in the water. Andrew always had a certain trait that made him seem more intimidating than he actually was. Physically, the man wasn’t imposing, slight of build and relatively short (Even shorter than his son.) he would be the last person you’d think to be wary of. But there was something about him, though—something in the eyes, that reminded Colin of the dark, calculative eyes of a great white shark (Both sent a chill up the spine of any unlucky person who’d accidentally made eye contact with either.) and combined with his usual callous intelligence and sharp-tongue retorts, it certainly made him an unrivaled force in the courtroom. The two men stared at each other a moment, neither one making a move to eat or speak, then Andrew leaned back in his chair, picked up his glass of chardonnay, and took a drink.

 

Colin swallowed the lump in his throat and set his knife and fork on his plate, positioning them so they couldn’t accidentally roll off onto the pristine white tablecloth. “What am I doing here?” He asked.

 

Andrew set down his wine and grabbed his fork spearing a chunk of fish and eating it. He chewed slowly and watched his son start to squirm the longer his question went unanswered. Sadly a trait that he had inherited from his mother that endeared her to him, had for Colin, only proved to be one of his greatest hindrances. He waited until after he had finished chewing before he responded to his son’s inquiry with a vague question that had Colin clenching his jaw in irritation. “Can’t a father have lunch with his son?”

 

“He can,” he said. “But why? We don’t have lunch together.”

 

“Perhaps that needs to change,” Andrew conceded, “Veronica said—”

 

_ “Veronica said? _ ” Colin scoffed, looking at his father incredulously. “When have you ever done anything one of your  _ wives _  have said?” The way he said wives was a not so subtle barb thrown to at his father’s long line of spouses in which Veronica was number six and only a year older than himself.

 

Andrew continued on as if Colin hadn’t interrupted. “—that a family that eats together stays together—And I happen to agree. We’re too distant you and I, and with your future fast approaching, we need to show a united front in front of the board and the press, especially when you’re to be my successor. It’s about time that you start shadowing me, spending time at the firm, and going to more events—”

 

“And there it is!” Colin made a sweeping gesture with his hand as if to say,  _ See! I knew it! _ . “You drag me here under the pretense of  _ having lunch _ only to shanghai me into doing that stupid internship at the firm. This is why you and I don’t have lunch. Because it’s never just lunch—”

 

“What’s wrong with the internship?” Andrew asked.

 

“Everything. Every- _ damn _ -thing. I’m already going into law and I’ll be working for the firm as soon as I graduate, but once—just once—can you let me enjoy my college years in peace? Dammit, I’ll already be spending enough time there as it is,” he said.

 

“I let you take off a year and sail around the world, Colin,” Andrew reminded him. “That put us back a year and you not declaring your major put us back another—Despite appearances, I’m not as young as I used to be, and I’d like to retire before I’m eighty. But that is not going to happen unless you start taking this more seriously. How can I trust you with the future of the firm if you keep acting like a petulant child?”

 

“Then give it to someone else,” he said.

 

“Who? Your cousin Jamie?” Andrew looked a bit irate as his eyes sparked dangerously. “The boy’s too soft—Both you and I know that. He’s been slipping as of late, grades are falling, your uncle is having a hell of a time getting him to focus. Besides he’s not the heir—You are.” Andrew’s eyes softened slightly and he let out an inaudible sigh. “It’s time you grow up and stop running from your responsibilities which is why you’ll be attending dinner at the Gilmores’ this Friday.”

 

Colin blinked and his expression changed from one of irritation to alarm. “What? No.”

 

“This is not a request,” his father said coolly. 

 

“I don’t see why I need to go.” Colin was trying his best to keep his composure, but he was clearly ruffled. They hadn’t discussed this unpleasant subject in almost four years, not since Andrew had told him in a clipped matter-of-fact way that his trust fund and his inheritance relied solely on his marriage to the Gilmore-Hayden’s illegitimate granddaughter, and Colin would’ve gladly continued not having done so. 

 

“Because I told you to,” Andrew’s tone was firm and unyielding. “ It’s been four years, it’s about time you two were introduced.”

 

“Can’t I just meet her at the altar?” Colin asked bitterly. 

 

Andrew gave him a look that was the equivalent of an eye roll without the actual eye-rolling. “Don’t start,” he warned. “This is not up for discussion or debate. You will not weasel your way out of this dinner, understand? It’s important that you make a good impression and any more smart-assed comments like that will not be tolerated.” 

 

He fixed Colin with a withering stare that had the younger man dropping his gaze down to his plate; any and all fight being zapped out of him like a deflated balloon. Arguing with his father was a pointless endeavor. Once Andrew set his mind to something it was damn near impossible to get him off it and Colin knew that, so he had to resign himself to the fact that come Friday he would be meeting his quote-unquote fiancée whether he wanted to or not. 

 

He didn’t know too much about Lorelai Leigh Gilmore; only what he had been able to pick up through the grapevine of the high society elites and what his father had told him and what he himself had read in the newspaper article about her debutante ball. (Which admittedly wasn’t much. But it was enough to get an idea of what she was like or what she could be like.) She had caused big scandal when she was born; not so much because she was born to two teenagers still in high school (Even back then teen-pregnancies were fairly common and teen-abortions even more so; with the said afflicted being pulled out of school for a couple weeks under the guise of attending some rehab center or a spa or a fat-camp or some inane plastic surgery procedure like a new nose or bigger breasts to distract from the fact that their school uniforms were no longer too tight around the stomach.) but because said teenagers refused to get married afterwards. The scandal only grew when the mother (Also named Lorelai, coincidentally enough.) had disappeared quite suddenly and seemingly overnight with her daughter leaving Emily and Richard in shambles. It had taken them two years before they found their daughter in some backwoods country town just outside of Hartford and that was where they stayed. At least until they were thrust back into the limelight when Lorelai, the granddaughter, was accepted into Chilton Preparatory for the remainder of her high school days. She attended a handful of social events since then, the most memorable being the Daughters of the Daughters of the American Revolution debutante ball, but was still kept away from the gossiping socialites through her mother’s insistence. She graduated valedictorian at Chilton and had a reputation for being a dedicated student.

 

He had this image in his head of some bookish wallflower who was in way over her head when it came to social functions. Someone who was innocent to the point of being dense or even stupid and boring. She was called  _ Mary _ behind closed doors and Colin had zero interest in someone so pure, so perfect, so utterly boring. Because he thought that you’d have to be the most boring girl on the planet for your family to arrange your marriage at sixteen or ugly—But he had seen pictures of her and it certainly wasn’t the latter.

 

When Friday inevitably rolled around, Colin pulled up behind his father’s Mercedes at exactly six-forty-five. Andrew had been leaning against the silver sedan smoking and waiting for his son to make sure that he showed as if he didn’t trust him not to bail. (Although considering Colin’s history, it was a real possibility.) Veronica stood next to him her arms crossed and studying the naked cherub on the Gilmores’ driveway fountain and she made a comment to her husband about the small child peeing in the water that had Andrew snorting a laugh. They turned their attention to Colin as he stepped out of the car. 

 

“You’re early,” Andrew observed snuffing out his cigarette under the sole of his Italian loafer. The way he said it had Colin fighting back a scowl. 

 

“You said to make a good impression,” he said, slamming the car door shut and pocketing his keys. 

 

Some of Colin’s lingering resentment must have leaked into his tone because Andrew gave his son a warning look, while Veronica leaned around her husband and smiled at her step-son. “It’s good to see you again, Colin. How’s Yale?”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“That’s good,” she said with genuine relief. 

 

Colin would admit that out of all his father’s wives, Veronica was hands-down the best. She was a lot different than Andrew’s usual tastes. She, unlike the others, actually utilized her brain for something other than shopping and manicures and spas so it allowed him to actually hold a conversation with her. She was surprisingly insightful, especially when it came to anything involving the medical field, and her southern-belle charm easily simmered down any tension between the McCrae men whenever she was in the vicinity making her Colin’s ally at social events. “How are you?”

 

“I’m doing very well—”

 

“Yes, yes.” Andrew straightened up adjusting his suit jacket. “We’re all doing fine. Now if you’re both done catching up, we have a dinner to attend.” Veronica sent him a reproachful look but otherwise said nothing as he ushered them to the front door. Andrew rung the bell and they waited a beat before the door was opened and Richard was smiling down at them.

 

“Andrew, good to see you,” he said shaking the man’s hand. “It’s been awhile.”

 

“Almost two years,” he agreed. “I don’t believe you’ve met my wife, Veronica.” He placed his hand on the small of her back and smiled as the two shook hands.

 

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” Richard said. “Here let me take your coat.” He turned and called for the maid, who took their coats and deposited them in the foyer closet. 

 

Then he lead them down the hall to the parlor, where Emily was busy fiddling with a wrapped gift. She placed it on a table by the windows and looked up at them when they entered. A look of genuine affection passed over Emily’s face as she greeted Andrew and Colin, before simpering to a cooler society smile when addressing Veronica. They all sat down and drinks were given out as the group caught up on everything that had happened since they had last seen each other. Veronica and Colin were the odd ones out. This was the first time they had been introduced to the elder Gilmores and as such, they sat quietly by while Andrew, Richard, and Emily monopolized the conversation.

 

Five minutes in and Colin was already wishing to leave. The only upside to this evening was the tumbler of scotch he held in his hand, but after a sip, he found that it was Dewars and not Macallan leaving only a bitter taste in his mouth and a lump in his throat. At some point, Veronica had managed to strike up a conversation with Emily about some remodeling she made to the house and they both disappeared to look at some curtains or something in Richard’s study leaving the men to start talking about stocks and Colin subtly looking for an escape route. But before he could entertain any of the four possible scenarios he had thought up in the last sixty seconds or so, Veronica walked back into the parlor effectively putting a halt on his plans. She gave him a sympathetic look over the rim of her martini and then tried unsuccessfully to steer Andrew and Richard away from shop-talk before giving up and downing half of her glass. It was times like this that the age difference between Veronica and Andrew was palpable. Sometimes Colin forgot—Veronica was the type of person that seemed older than she was. This had in part to do with the fact that her mother had passed while she was in middle school leaving her to act as mother to her two younger brothers. But when she was sitting across from him in a tight cocktail dress, sipping on a martini, and looking just as bored as he was he remembered that she was only a year his senior.

 

He found his mind wandering as he tried to look interested in what his father was saying, albeit he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. The antique grandfather clock chimed in the corner as the hour hand struck seven. It might as well as have been a death toll for how he felt his spirit slowly leeching out of him. He was about to throw in the towel, to say to hell with it, and leave—consequences be damned. Surely, Andrew didn’t need him here for this. His fiancée, if he dared to call her that unironically, wasn’t even there. He could be at the pub right now getting piss drunk with Finn and Logan and hitting on some skirt at the bar, but no, he was there at the Gilmore’s for a dinner that he was sure was going to be Hindenburg and Chernobyl combined.

 

As it turned out, he was a hundred percent accurate with his prediction. Hindenburg and Chernobyl didn’t even begin to describe the fallout from the ticking time bomb that was that evening. A time bomb that started ticking at exactly seven-oh-five when Lorelai Gilmore stepped into the room. After he looked past her stocking clad legs and form-fitting blue dress that hugged her every curve and made her striking blue eyes pop against the backdrop of dark loose curls and pale skin, Colin noticed immediately that there was something wrong. The woman was stiff, her posture straight as a board, and smiledtenselye as she shook his father’s hand. He caught the side-eye look she gave her mother, a flash of anger, and then she was excusing both of them from the room taking Emily’s arm and towing her behind her.

 

Richard paused in the process of making a second martini and shot a pensive look towards the door. Then he turned to Veronica and asked if she would like a refill to which she responded in the affirmative. A tense silence passed through the room as Richard busied himself with the drink cart and the McCraes straightened up reflexively similar to how a dog perks up when it hears someone at the door. 

 

That was when the yelling started.

 

It started low like a couple of seagulls squawking in the distance, but then it steadily grew louder and louder as the seconds passed. Colin wasn’t sure about what was going on. But it became clear to him in that moment that something was terribly wrong. He looked to Richard for answers, howeve,r the elder Gilmore appeared to be just as confused by the situation. 

 

The doorbell rang and if possible Colin tensed even more. He didn’t need to know who it was. He knew as did everyone else in the room. “Rory is that you?” Richard called out.

 

“Hi grandpa,” came a soft feminine voice as Rory Gilmore stepped into the room. Colin couldn’t help his eyes trailing after her as she walked forward, hugging her grandfather, and saying something about skydivers and spiders. She was wearing a light pink dress that clung to her chest before flaring out at the waist and falling to her knees in soft ruffles. It was a much more conservative dress than he was used to seeing women wear, but somehow she pulled it off well. The color brought out the pale blue of her eyes and the thin straps and high neckline showed off her slender shoulders and arms. Richard took one of these slender arms and looped it around his own as he led her over to the couches. 

 

She was promptly introduced to his father and she politely shook his hand; a small smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. It was a fake smile. Colin easily recognized it after years of seeing it on the faces of other socialites. But stil,l there was something honest about the expression. It didn’t feel underhanded or premeditated, instea,d it felt natural like she often smiled out of habit when she was nervous— _ And she certainly was nervous.  _ He saw the way she kept glancing over her shoulder at the door like she was about to bolt. She almost did when a large crash sounded from Richard’s study and it was only because her grandfather kept ahold of her that she managed to stay put at all. 

 

Colin was too busy watching the shift of emotions across her face to pay attention to the joke Andrew made about golf. He saw her eyes dart around the room taking stock of all of them, before focusing back on her grandfather as he gestured for her to sit on the loveseat next to him. She seemed both confused and suspicious, the gears in her head quickly turning to fit together the missing puzzle pieces. He dropped his arm off the back of the loveseat and took a sip of scotch to overpower the scent of floral and amber wafting from her skin. 

 

The conversation shifted its focus to Rory. Andrew asked her about Yale, about her major in Journalism, and her internship in Boston. But through all of it her attention seemed to be drifting. She answered each question with vague one word responses and it wasn’t until Richard gave her her gift, an antique tiara that had supposedly been stolen from an Austrian Duchess, that she finally focused on what was being said. She managed to turn things around and get the focus off of her by getting into a debate with her grandfather about which of the Gilmore’s were well-versed in the art of thievery that in turn led to a story about Charles Gilmore and his bumbling heist into the Central Park Zoo. And for a moment, just a moment, the atmosphere seemed to lighten considerably as they all laughed over Richard’s father’s drunken antics. 

 

That moment ended as soon as it had started with the slamming of a door and Emily’s voice carrying out into the hall. “Lorelai! Don’t walk away from me!” 

 

Colin winced unconsciously at the anger in the older woman’s voice. His eyes flicker over to Rory who had tightened her fingers around her club soda and worried her lip between her teeth. She made a move to stand up, but Richard stopped her, ordering her to stay, and marching out into the hall letting the doors click closed behind him. It didn’t do any good in blocking out the conversation and Colin found himself listening with rapt attention. 

 

_ “What are you two doing? You’re making a scene!” _

 

_ “Ask her!” _

 

_ “Don’t turn this on me, Lorelai! You were supposed to tell her!” _

 

Colin almost reared back, his gaze snapping to the woman sitting beside him. Suddenly, everything made sense. The looks, the tense atmosphere, the yelling— _She didn’t know._ _Shit._ He watched the realization dawn on Andrew and Veronica, the latter parting her mouth in a silent gasp while her husband pursed his lips indiscernible. She reacted quickly, trying to mitigate the damage by bringing up a portrait of Rory in Richard’s study.

 

_ “What are you talking about? Tell who what?” _

 

_ “Yes, Lorelai, who?” _

 

_ “What? Lorelai Victoria Gilmore are you telling me that you—” _

 

But the woman was having none of it. She stood up, cutting Veronica off mid-sentence. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ll have to excuse me for a sec.” Then without another look at any of them, she walked out into the hall, not bothering to close the door behind her.

 

Colin leaned forward in his seat as he listened. 

 

“It was your job to prepare Rory—”

 

“Prepare me for what?” A pregnant pause followed as soon as the other Gilmores realized their conversation was no longer private. He heard her suck in a breath and imagined her staring down her family with those piercing blue eyes of hers. “Mom? Grandpa? Grandma, please.”

 

“No, I’ll tell her.” That was Lorelai’s voice. 

 

“Well, somebody tell me something. I feel like I’m on the ‘Jerry Springer Show’!” 

 

There was click of woman’s high-heeled shoes and then Lorelai’s voice was cutting through the silence of the house. “Well, babe it’s like this...” she stared. “You remember how you got accepted to go to Chilton? And do you remember how I couldn’t afford the tuition and in exchange for the money we had to come to Friday Night Dinners? Well— _ uh— _ that was only the first condition of the loan. The second condition was— _ umm _ —the second condition was...an arranged marriage.  _ I know-I know-I know— _ this sounds bad, really bad—Like Led Zepplin playing ‘Whole Lotta Love’ at ‘Live Aid’—But just let me explain. I thought I could get you out of it. I didn’t think that—I mean...I couldn’t have guess that Grandma would accept an offer of marriage a week after your debutante ball. And I was going to tell you,  _ honest-to-god _ , I was going to tell you. But it was never the right time and I didn’t know how to, ya know? And we all agreed to tell you on your eighteenth birthday—and I was supposed to then, but I didn’t because you were still with Jess and you had just started your last year of high school and I didn’t wanna put that on you—On top of college applications, it was too much. I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you. I am. You may not believe it, but I am. And-and-and...Rory? Rory, sweetie, talk to me. What are you thinking?”

 

“Don’t fucking touch me!” Colin winced. 

 

“Rory—”

 

“No—Stay right-fucking-there. Don’t come near me!  _ I mean it.” _

 

She was understandably upset. Who wouldn’t be in that situation? Colin admitted that he had reacted similarly with a lot of swearing and yelling before he marched out and crashed at Robert’s for the rest of summer vacation until starting Yale. He remembered feeling like he was punched in the gut, like everything had been ripped away from him in the time it took for Andrew to hand him that damn ring. Before that moment he had thought he had choices, at least in that regard—but he was wrong. So very, very wrong. And he came to the horrible realization that any modicum of free will he thought he had had, in fact, never existed in the first place. It was an abhorrent feeling that he wouldn’t wish on anyone, much less an unsuspecting woman whose only fault he figured was that she had trusted her mother to look out for her wellbeing. 

 

He watched as she paced past the open door, clenching and unclenching her fists—Like if she could, her hands would be wrapped around Lorelai’s throat. Then she stopped and stared blankly at the painting in the hall. Silence stretched uncomfortably long as she stood there. Nobody dared to say a word. His eyes trailed along her back to her stiff shoulders and down her arms to her hands clenched in the fabric of her dress. She breathed deeply, purposely, out her nose and it seemed that it was taking every ounce of self-control for her not to blow up into a fit of hysterics. 

 

He admired her composure. Godknows he hadn’t had had half the level of decorum she did. 

 

After about five minutes, sufficient enough time for her to come to grips with the onslaught of revelations that had been sprung on her, Rory reacted in the manor that one would expect: with cool cruel furry. She marched into the parlor; her eyes like twin bolts of lightning at telltale sign of the storm raging beneath her cool demeanor. Then moved deliberately to the end table, without looking at any of the room’s occupants, snatched up the tiara and stormed out. 

 

“You can keep the fucking tiara!” 

 

“Rory—“

 

“No, I speak. You listen. Got it? Good. I’m not getting married. I’m not getting married now. I’m not getting married tomorrow. I’m not getting married next week or next month or five— _ goddamn— _ years from now. It won’t matter when it is because if I do get married, I will still not be marrying  _ him. _ ”

 

“Rory be reasonable. Colin is a very good match,” Emily started.

 

_ “Oh, I’m sure he is! _ That’s not what this is fucking about though, is it? I don’t give a flying-Christ’s-dick if he’s a good match!”

 

—Don’t use that language!”

 

“Oh, blow it out your cunt, Grandma.”

 

“LORELAI LEIGH DO NOT SPEAK TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER LIKE THAT—“

 

It was like listening to a boxing match. Except instead of punches, the Gilmores were throwing verbal blows faster than even Muhammad Ali could dodge. There was a part of him that was fascinated by everything that was going on—For once it wasn’t him on the other side of the assault which was a relief to say the least—And he was amazed at how well Rory was managing to hold her own. She was clearly outnumbered and the way Emily kept throwing her left and right hooks in the form of threats and insults was enough to knock any lesser determined person down; and yet she remained unyielding. Rory had inherited that Gilmore stubbornness, so each blow was not only blocked but counteracted with irrefutable facts.

 

Colin’s eyes left the open doorway, flickering briefly over to his father. His stomach dropped and any and all elation he had of having this engagement being derailed by this brilliant, intelligent, stubborn— _ hell, even beautiful— _ woman went up into a puff of smoke. Andrew was turned towards the door, his face showing only in profile, but Colin saw the smile on his face. It was the same smile that he had when he was in the courtroom and he knew he had hooked the jury. It was the smile he had when Colin was unable to counter him in an argument, when he had successfully signed another high-profile client, when he found an new trophy-wife to sink his teeth into, and when he artfully avoided any repercussions of the subsequent divorce—Essentially, it was the smile he had when he knew he was about to win. 

 

It sent a chill up his spine. Colin hated that smile more than he hated anything else in that moment. He didn’t want his father to win—not this, not ever. Maybe he was naive. Maybe he was being idealistic, but he wanted Rory to win—to be the underdog that no one saw coming. Because if she could do it, this seemingly wallflower bookworm could stand up for herself, then maybe he could—

 

_ “W-We’ll pull your  _ **_Yale_ ** _!”  _ Emily screeched.

 

Colin tensed, clenching his jaw. Those words were a warning shot. Any sane person would know to back down the second money became part of the equation. Only a select few ever crossed that point-of-no-return and he doubted that Rory had the nerve to push herself over that line. His father was going to win— _ damn him _ —He was going to win and Rory was going to cave because she wouldn’t risk Yale—She couldn’t risk Yale... _ She wasn’t that crazy.  _

 

“If you don’t marry that boy, your Grandfather and I will pull your funding for Yale. We won’t pay for it anymore after tonight. You’ll have to drop out and pay your own way through community college like all the other high school graduates from lower-income families. You’ll get into thousands of dollars of student loan debt which you won’t be able to pay back because you won’t be working as a journalist for the New York Times or CNN— **_because they don’t hire journalists from community colleges, Rory_ ** _ — _ And, you’ll be working the drive-thru at a local McDonald’s and one night you’ll say to yourself, _ ’If only I had!’ _ Are you prepared for that?  _ Are you prepared to throw away your entire future?  _ Because that,  **_My Dear_ ** , is what horrible fate will befall you should you choose not to do shit.”

 

_ Bang. Bang. Bang— _ There was no recovery from that. No way Rory could dispute it. Emily had effectively boxed her into a corner and the only way for her to get out of it was to either lay down with her tail between her legs or risk everything in a last stitch effort in which the odds of her coming out on top were a million-to-one. He was as affected by this knowledge as much (Maybe even more so.) as he had been when he had stood in Rory’s place. It reminded him of that final scene in ‘Old Yeller’ where Travis has to put down his beloved dog. He felt as he did then; powerless and bound by the plot of this horror film that was his life. 

 

He wanted to speak up, to come to her defense, and say everything that had been brewing in his mind about this engagement since he first learned of it. But he couldn’t. Mentally, it was like the words had been shoved back down his throat and kept there by his useless heavy tongue. 

 

But then something unexpected happened. 

 

His mind almost tricked him to believing that he had finally succumbed to his father’s insanity and was experiencing a vivid hallucination in which Rory told her grandmother to shove it. The shock of the single “Okay.” from Rory was like an explosion. Sudden and loud, despite having said it with calm resolve because of how her family reacted to it. 

 

_ “What? Rory—Rory! What are you doing?”  _ Lorelai screech sounded like shrapnel being shredded, and everyone would do best to keep their heads low so the bullets didn’t hit them on the way out. The law of self-preservation dictated that this was the time to start heading for the emergency exits because it was only a downward spiral from here and you didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity when the h-bomb dropped and the fallout was sure to be catastrophic. 

 

“Yes, hello. Who would I talk to about dropping out of Yale—“

 

_ “Rory hang up that phone! We can discuss this, figure out a compromise,” _ Richard said.

 

“ _ Yes, honey. You don’t have to do this—“ _

 

“What’s left to discuss? We’ve already discussed it. I’m not marrying that guy and Grandma’s agreed to let me out of the engagement as long as you two don’t pay for Yale—There’s you’re compromise right there, Grandpa—And I’m okay with that, so what’s left to discuss? Dinner? Ya’know, I’ve lost my appetite and I really need to start packing, so I’ll take a rain check on that too—“

 

She was a catalysts and everyone was reacting to her. He listened as Lorelai and Richard pleaded— _ begged— _ Rory to reconsider. Emily had gone practically catatonic with shock and Veronica was trying to revive her with vodka, the maid was one more broken plate away from quitting, Richard was beside himself, Lorelai was outright trying to pry the phone out of her daughter’s hands, and for once his father hadn’t had been able to predict this turn of events and as unprepared as everyone else. Things continued to escalate until Rory was screaming at her mother—Screaming at her for years and years of torment and bullshit that she had had to put up with (After twenty years, the list was excruciatingly long.)—And Andrew had to grudgingly, with prodding from Veronica, get everything back under control; however this was after Rory had stormed out with the last of her words still ringing in everyone’s ears:  _ “You’re the one who threw my future away, not me.” _

 

Now everyone was seated around the long mahogany dining table, six individual cups before them, a almost full pot of coffee sitting near the centerpiece of white and pink peonies, and a bottle of Guinness right beside that as per Veronica’s suggestion. Lorelai had been the only person who had taken a cup of coffee, but she had taken only one sip before pushing it away from her and letting it remain there, untouched. This wasn’t the time for coffee; instead she reached over and unscrewed the cap from the bottle of whiskey and poured a decent amount into Veronica’s unused cup, sloshing a little with her shaky hands. 

 

“You’re making a mess,” Richard chided. “At least use the plate, Lorelai.”

 

“What does it matter? I couldn’t care less right now,” she said and true to her word, downed the entire eight-ounce teacup like it was a shot. 

 

Sighing Richard turned his attention to his wife, who had recovered enough to drink a whole martini and was just starting on her second. Normally, she’d be the one scolding Lorelai on the basis of proper etiquette and not spilling whiskey all over the tabletop like a child, but in light of recent events she was not only staying out of it but leading the way for lack of sobriety. He sighed again turning his attention to Andrew. “It appears we need to reevaluate things,” he said. “My granddaughter has refused the engagement so...I don’t see that there’s anything we could do to change her mind.” 

 

“The contract still stands. I’m afraid,” Andrew stared down the length of the table gravely. “We all agreed to this four years ago, I drew up the papers, and everyone here signed them—”

 

“But she didn’t,” Lorelai laughed bitterly. “We all signed, but Rory didn’t—She’s right. She doesn’t have to do anything and we can’t make her.”

 

“And whose fault is that?” Emily shot her look. “If you had told her all this in beginning, then we wouldn’t be here.”

 

“As if I could’ve gotten her to sign that prenup when she was sixteen? I’ll admit, I should’ve told her.  _ Hell _ , I should’ve told her before I even considered taking that stupid loan, but Mom c’mon—She’s not an idiot. Nothing would’ve gotten her to sign that thing. 

 

Colin covered his mouth with his hand to hide a gleeful smile stretching over his face. He was shocked by this turn of events, but unlike the others, he was overjoyed by how things were playing out. 

 

“Keep it civil,” Richard shot a warning look to his wife and daughter. “Fighting will get us nowhere in this situation.”

 

Veronica nodded her head in agreement. “We all need to work together. I’m sure between all of us we can come up with a solution,” she said and turned to Andrew. “Is the engagement really set in stone? Can’t the merger still happen without it?”

 

“No,” he said. “Without the engagement, there is no merger and vice versa.”

 

“Maybe Straub would reconsider,” Richard started.

 

Emily scoffed. “Have you’ve ever known Straub to reconsider anything? That man is a mule.”

 

“He’s a jackass,” Lorelai said refilling her teacup. “Why the hell isn’t he here? This whole thing was his idea to begin with. He should be here taking responsibility for this shitstorm—”

 

“Language, Lorelai,” Richard frowned.

 

“—We shouldn’t have agreed to anything he said to begin with. It’s not right that he ignores the very fact that he had a granddaughter, but the second she becomes useful to him it’s all ‘Hey let’s sell her off to the highest bidder!’” She shook her head and brought the cup up to her lips, drinking a little, then smiled ruefully. “I’ll tell you,” she laughed, “we’re the real idiots here. He played us. And now, we’re all fucked!”

 

“Thank you for that eloquent observation,” Emily snipped, “But that doesn’t get us anywhere.”

 

Richard agreed wholeheartedly with his wife, but he found that he was still upset with her. “Why did you bring up Yale?” He asked.

 

“I thought it was the only way to get her to see reason. How was I supposed to know that she’d jump the gun and-and do that—”

 

“Well she is my daughter,” Lorelai said.

 

“Clearly!” Emily threw her hands up in frustration. “This is all your fault! If you had followed through with the plan that your father and I had set out and the plan the Hayden’s had set out for Christopher, none of this would have happened.”

 

Lorelai slammed her cup down, her face pinched in anger. A bit of whiskey sloshed over the side of the cup, dribbling onto Emily’s hand-stitched tablecloth. But she didn’t care, instead she fixed her mother with a cool stare and clenched her teeth together. “Are we seriously doing this again?”

 

Then Emily said a line that sounded as rehearsed as if it had been coined by Shakespeare himself. “When you get pregnant, you get married. A child needs a mother and a father—”

 

“The horse is dead! Put the stick down!”

 

“Enough!” Richard couldn’t take much more of this bickering. His doctor said his blood pressure was already high enough as it was and this whole ordeal was only exasperating his symptoms. “Stop it, both of you. Dredging up the past like this isn’t going to change anything. We are where we are— _ there’s no changing that _ —so if either of you don’t have anything useful to contribute, kindly keep your mouths shut.” He adjusted his bowtie, loosening it, and with heavy shoulders looked across the table to Andrew, who had been silently thinking the whole time.

 

“I see no reason why we need to involve Straub and Francine in this. For all intended purposes the engagement still stands. Richard, you and Emily can keep with your promise to cut off Rory’s funding for Yale. Right now she doesn’t think you’ll do it, but if you do, she’ll see you’re serious. It’s not easy being out on your own and she’ll realize that. Meanwhile Colin,” Andrew gave his son a look of appraisal. “You are to go back to Yale, talk to this girl, befriend her, play the doting fiancé for the press. It’ll buy us some time until we figure out a way to address this problem.”

 

Colin wanted to laugh. Did his father honestly think that would work? Like he would play in this charade? He would do the exact opposite of what his father wanted and make damn sure that Lorelai Gilmore didn’t change her mind. Except he didn’t tell his father any of this—He wasn’t suicidal. So he merely nodded and pretended to be on-board with the plan. 

 

“And what about me?” Lorelai asked

 

“You’re her mother,” Andrew said not wanting to spell it out. Lorelai stared at him blankly. “So mother her.”

**Author's Note:**

> AU: *Rory’s birthday has been changed from October 8, 1984, to September 12, 1984.  
> *In addition to Friday Night Dinners, Emily also arranged it so that she could choose Rory’s husband.  
> *Rory had been engaged to Colin McCrae since a week after her Debutante Ball. Lorelai was supposed to have told Rory on her 18th Birthday, but she didn’t.  
> *Rory didn’t sleep with Dean at the Dragonfly’s test run. But Dean did kiss her in the hallway when he was bringing in the doors. Rory responded by pushing him off her, but she was unable to yell or do anything else because Tom interrupted them.  
> *Rory didn’t go to Europe with Emily. Instead, she managed to swing an internship at a small online magazine in Boston, called The Boston Paper-Boy, and had been staying with Christopher and Sherry over the summer in order to avoid Stars Hollow—I.e. Dean.  
> *Christopher and Sherry actually have a good relationship.  
> *The Grandparents are still together, although their relationship is rocky.  
> *Everything that happened with Jess stays the same.


End file.
